Clint Memo

Winning the Time Lottery.

2011-04-26T14:37:00.004-05:00

Everyone fantasizes about winning the lottery. What would you do if you had more money than you could ever want? I still think about that from time to time. Lately though, I've been thinking about a different question. What would I do if I had all the free time I would ever want? Maybe it's my mid-life crisis manifesting but I'm now thinking more about not having enough time to get things done or do the things I want to do than being able to afford to do them.
It's not just "life long dreams" or "bucket lists". I'm talking about just "getting things done" - weekend projects that never seem to find a weekend; movies and TV shows that I've been meaing to watch but probably never get to see; books I'll never get to read; stories I'll never get to write; games I'll never get to play. None of these are things that take very much time, but I can never find a way to get them done - any of them.

Goodbye DirecTV

2010-12-26T13:00:00.002-05:00

Dear DirecTV,

I know we've been together for a while. Eight years is a long time. When we first met, I was so excited. I loved the crystal clear picture. I loved the huge channel selection. And you've added features since then - DVR, local stations. Everything you do is still beautiful.

But it's time for us to part ways.

It's true, your price keeps going up. Costs have increased. I understand. But, that's not the real issue. The real problem is this: Your content no longer meets my needs. All those channels for children are great, but my child is a teenager now. She's long outgrown Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. And the channels I liked to watch? Most of them have devolved into showing things I have no interest in. There has been a long standing joke that MTV doesn't show videos anymore, but that joke has become the new norm. The History Channel doesn't show history anymore. The Sci-Fi channel shows less and less Science Fiction each year. Now they show wrestling. It would be easy for me to make a joke about Sarah Palin having a show on TLC, (formerly The Learning Channel), but that's just water over the dam. You have lots of shows, but not very many I want to watch.

I'll miss BBCAmerica. I've learned to love Top Gear and Doctor Who, but they're just not enough to make me want to continue our relationship.

I've gotten back together with our old former friend Tivo. I've realized that most of what I am watching was on the networks now, so we're recording all those shows that I like to watch.

Also, I have to confess. I've found someone new. I've started a relationship with Netflix. They have more content then I'll ever be able to watch. And they cost 1/10th the price. No, the picture quality is not as good, but I'd rather see things I like in mediocre picture quality than a crystal clear picture of something I'm not interested in.

I'm sorry DirecTV. That's just how I feel.

Don't take it so hard. I'm sure you'll find someone new.

Rock and Roll Christmas Music - HUMBUG!

2010-12-17T13:31:00.004-05:00

Am I the only one that HATES Rock and Roll Christmas music? It's not that I hate Christmas music, per se. Some of it I enjoy quite a bit, but there's something about Rock and Roll Christmas music that I just find...repulsive. It's like the worst of both kinds of music - sickeningly sweet lyrics, simplistic cheery melodies, mediocre vocals and a bunch of musicians that sound like they just learned the song in the previous take.

I've never been a Bruce Springsteen fan, but I respect him as an artist - except when I hear his version of Santa Clause is Coming to Town. Please, Bruce, just stop. Ugh. I hate Jingle Bell Rock and it seems like people keep making new versions of it, but it never gets any better. The song I hate the most - by far - is the Beach Boys Little Saint Nick. Don't get me wrong. I think the Beach Boys are great. Good Vibrations is one of the best songs of the 60's, but Little Saint Nick is horrendous, like fingernails-on-a-chalkboard horrendous. Seriously, it sounds like the Beach Boys making fun of themselves - Blech!

Maybe part if it is that I hear the same few irritating songs year after year - over and over and over. Of course, it that were true, then the cure would be MORE of this crap and that's not something I want to encourage - at all. In the last decade or so, I've started hearing country versions of Rock and Roll Christmas songs. Since I generally dislike country music, I'm not hopeful.

Great - now I'm imagining a country version of Jingle Bell Rock. You'll have to excuse me now. I need to play my copy of the "Charlie Brown Christmas" album. Maybe Vince Guaraldi can wipe that other slush out of my brain.

Good Grief.

Han Shot First

2010-11-30T18:32:00.005-05:00

You already know the story and it's an old meme, but let me sum up anyway. In the original Star Wars, Han Solo shot Greedo the bounty hunter in the Cantina - in cold blood. In the first revised edition, George Lucas changed it so that Greedo shot first (and missed) and Han shot him back. In the second revised edition, Han and Greedo shot at the same time. Greedo missed. Han didn't.

...and an entire planet of nerds were outraged.

Lucas said he made the change because Han was a hero and heroes don't shoot first. Far be it from me to tell him he was wrong to make that change, but since this is the internet, I'm going to do it anyway.

Han shooting first improves the story in two different ways. Firstly, if you can, think back to the very first time you saw Star Wars - assuming you are old enough to have seen the original version. Luke and Ben go into this seedy bar to hire a pilot to take them to some other planet. After they hire the guy, we see him calmly murder someone, admittedly someone who looked like he deserved it. This immediately jacks up the tension for the audience. Oh Crap! The pilot they hired is a murderer! Surely, he'll turn on them before they get where they are going.
This doesn't happen, of course, but the first time you see the movie, you don't know that. This tension is lost if Han doesn't shoot first.

Secondly, let's look at the long term character development of Han. Through the course of two movies, he evolves into a self-less hero - so selfless that he gives himself up to Boba Fett in order to save his friends. Him being lowered into the carbonite chamber is the climax of his development. But it is where he evolves from that has been changed. In the original, Han starts as a cold blooded murderer and grows into a selfless, though roguish hero. In the updated version, Han merely starts as a small time crook trying to project the image of being a badass.

I think this is one place where Lucas got it right the first time.

Why wait?

2010-11-30T18:23:00.002-05:00

I was listening to a podcast the other day (Fear the boot's occasional spinoff - fear en route) in which they were discussing Podfade, or, the phenomenon where podcasts simply stop producing material and fade away without explanation. As they mentioned, the same thing happens with blogs. The reasons are all perfectly logical - the writer lost interest, the writer got too busy, the writer ran out of things to say - i.e. real life intruded.

Not having posted anything in two years, I asked myself why. After a bit of reflection, I realized that it was none of the typical reasons. It was simply that I didn't want to follow up such a significant event with something trivial, fluffy or just silly.

Now I realize that was a stupid trap to be caught in. Did I stop watching movies after seeing something é important?é Why should I stop writing after writing about an important event? Enough with seriousness!

Let the parade of trivialities begin!

If a tree falls in the yard and hits the only one there, does it make a sound?

2008-09-26T12:27:00.015-05:00

On Sunday, September 14, 2008, a branch fell from a tree and injured me. Here is the story as I remember it.

The tractor just wouldn't start. Apparently, I had flooded it badly enough that it was refusing to turn over. Resigned to having to use the push mower on the entire yard, I left mom's house and began the short walk back home. I'm not sure what I was listening to on my phone's MP3 player, but "The Empire Strikes Back" is a likely candidate as I had just acquired a bunch of Star Wars MP3's. I looked at the clock on my phone. It was about 12:30 PM.

...and then I had this horrible dream. It was dark. I was crawling on my hands and knees. There was a great weight on my back and I was trying to crawl out from under it. I fell onto my chest, then struggled back to my hands and knees and kept creeping forward.

...and then I was in my car - riding in the passanger seat. My wife was driving. "What's going on?" I asked, "Why am I riding? Where are we going?"
"Good God!", she laughed, "for the eighth time, a tree fell and hit you in the head. I'm taking you to the immediate care center to have you checked out."
"What's so funny?"
"You asked me that like eight times already!"

...and then I got out of the car, walked into a building, sat down, got back up then walked back to the car - strange.

...and then my wife was helping me out of my jeans and into a hospital gown. I was in a hospital room. There was a nurse there with a wheelchair saying something about x-rays. I sat in the chair. It was lumpy and uncomfortable. She whisked me through the hospital, dodging people, racing around corners. I thought I was going to be sick.
They got me up out of the wheelchair and began to x-ray my back. I was having trouble seeing and hearing. I tried to tell the aid, but I'm not sure if she heard me. "Everything is fuzzy," I said/thought, " and I am hearing this buzzing in my ears. I think you need to hurry up. I don't think I can stand up much longer."

...and I was back in the hospital room, on the bed. A different woman was taking my blood pressure. "60 over 40" she said. "That's pretty low."
"Doesn't blood pressure usually go up when someone is in a lot of pain?" I heard my wife ask from across the room.
"Usually," the woman answered, "but sometimes it goes down." Alarm bells were going off in my head. Maybe I had seen too many medical shows, but this seemed wrong. Was I going into shock?
The woman (I don't know if she was a doctor or a nurse), hooked my up to an IV, and gave me something for the pain - morphine. (Morphine is a wonderful thing. I can see why people get addicted to it.)

Sometime after that is when I came out of my mental funk. I noticed a clock on the wall. It was 4:30. My wife was sitting in the room with me, talking on her cell phone.
"They gave him an IV,", she was telling someone. "Then they are gong to try the x-rays again. They want to do a CT scan, but they are on emergency power and that machine won't work. They have a tech coming in to fix it." After more small talk, she hung up.
"Ok," I asked. "What happened?" She rolled her eyes at me. "It's ok, I'm better. I remember things now. Tell me what happened."
"You were out mowing and it looks like a tree limb fell on you. We don't really know. I was inside when you called on your cellphone and asked for our daughter to come outside and help you, I thought you wanted her to pull weeds or something. She got you up and into the house. You were babbling and you kept asking for your glasses. Also, the umbrella pulled the glass out of the table, so I sent our daughter outside to try to wind down the umbrella. She said she was going to put on a jacket and a helmet first - smart girl! While she was out there, the glass shattered. She didn't get hurt, but there's glass all over the patio. She's at mom's house now."
"Anyway, I brought you to an immediate care center first, but they said they would want to do a CT scan and that they don't have one. They recommended I take you to the emergency room. On the way, our daughter called and said that the big tree in the front yard came down, but it didn't look like it hit the house. And, the power is out at home. Our daughter and your sister went back later and found your glasses, they are pretty bent up."
"When we got here, the hospital lost power. They are on emergency power and can't run the CT scan until they get a tech to come in and repair it. "

I was very sleepy. The morphine kept the edge off the pain, but my back really hurt as did my left ankle and my left knee.

Soon after, another nurse came in (with the same lumpy wheelchair) and carted me off for another round of x-rays. I made it through this time without passing out and soon found myself back in the hospital bed attached to my beloved morphine drip. Because the hospital was on emergency power, the TV in the room didn't work. My wife and I just stared at each other. Little did I know this was a sign of things to come.

Around 6:30 PM, they got the CT scan machine working again so I took another trip in the same lumpy wheelchair. I was back in my room soon after. I sent my wife off to get some dinner for herself and asked her to bring back my prescription sunglasses that I knew were in my car. I'd rather see clearly in the dark than have everything be blurry.

While she was gone, yet another doctor came in to talk to me. He said that the x-rays and CT scan were all normal so there didn't appear to be any permanent damage, though I had suffered what he called a level 3 concussion. Unfortunately, here was a lot of bruising on my back and that it would be painful for quite some time. I told him that he would have to repeat all this information for my wife because between the head injury and the morphine, I was likely to forget a lot of the details.

My wife returned and, we gathered our things and went home.

Our yard was a disaster. The big maple in the front was down and it took lots of limbs from a pine tree when it went. The maple was about 70 feet tall and over three feet in diameter at the base. On top of that, another tree split and half of it fell across the driveway and blocked in the other car. Limbs, leaves and pine needles were everywhere. It was a giant mess - and I couldn't do anything to it.

The power was out. The power stayed out for eight days. The only thing worse than being stuck home on the couch and not being able to move, is to be stuck home on the couch not being able to move and not being able to watch TV either. I spent a lot of time on the couch, on my back, listening to the radio of my mp3 player. I mostly listened to NPR. If you check your calendar, you'll see that was the big financial collapse started - news not well designed to cheer up an injured person.

My daughter was awesome. She's only ten years old but she really pulled through in a big way that week. My wife has a bad knee and walks with a cane. That left my daughter as the most physically capable person in the house. She ran errands around the house, walked dogs (we have three), pick up things and never complained. (Well, that's not true. She did complain some, but not nearly as much as she had a right to). School was out that week. So it was like summer vacation for her - except that all her friends were in daycare (working parents) and with no electricity, she couldn't play on the computer or play the Wii or even watch TV, and her parents kept giving her jobs to do. Oh, and she had to go to bed at 8:00 PM, cuz that's when it got dark!
Worst.
Vacation.
Ever.
She was awesome.

I was up and around in a day or two. I get a little better each day, but I'm still far from 100%. Most of the debris in my yard has been cleaned up. My knee still hurts, but I'm walking close to a normal speed. My back hurts around the level of my shoulder blades. I'm still taking LOTS of Ibuprofen. A few days after the accident, I had a bruise on my back that ran from my waste line almost to my shoulder blades.

At this point it looks like I'm going to recover fully - eventually.

Of 21 and Monty Hall

2008-09-10T09:09:00.004-05:00

Recently, I saw the movie "21" (with Kevin Spacey and a bunch of young actors I didn't recognize). Early in the movie, there is a Kevin Spacey talks about the classic Monty Hall - a problem that almost everyone gets wrong. It goes like this.

Imagine you are playing the classic TV game show "Let's Make a Deal." You have three doors to pick from. Behind one door is a brand new car. Behind each of the other doors is a goat. Monty let's you pick a door. Not knowing where the car is, you pick a door at random, say door #1. Monty (who knows where the car is) opens door #3, revealing a goat.
He then gives you the option of either keeping your pick or choosing door #2 instead. What should you do? If are like me (and almost everyone else), you would think "It doesn't matter. The car could be behind either door so changing my mind doesn't improve my chances." And like me, you would be wrong. You should ALWAYS choose the other door.

The answer defies common sense. It is completely counter intuitive. It is also correct.

When I saw that scene, I got it wrong as well, but I was so convinced that I was right that I went to the all-knowing Wikipedia for the answer. They have their own explanation as well as few examples to try and explain it. In trying to understand it as well as explain it to some of my friends (who were equally unbelieving), I came up with my own example that, I think, better explains what is going on.

Let's use the same game but with something more familiar. Imagine you are playing a game with three cards - an Ace of Spades, a 2 of Hearts and a 2 of Diamonds. The dealer deals one card face down to you and then deals the other two cards face down to himself. He looks at his two cards and flips over one of them, always a red 2. (The rules state that he must do this.) Then he gives you the option of keeping your card or switching with his remaining down card. What should you do?

Keep in mind that before the cards were dealt:

the chances of the dealer getting the Ace were 2 in 3 because he gets 2 of the 3 cards
the chances of you getting the Ace were 1 in 3
the chances of you getting a 2 were 2 in 3
the chances of the dealer getting a 2 were 3 in 3 (there is only 1 ace and since he gets two cards, the other card must be a 2)

Before he flips his card, you already know that one of his cards is going to be a 2. Therefore, when he shows you a 2, it CHANGES NOTHING. The chances of his other card being the Ace ARE STILL 2 IN 3.

So, do you want to change cards now? I thought you would.

If you don't believe that explanation, here's another more rigorous (read "anal retentive") way to prove it. The surest way to explain something in statistics is to list every possible outcome and compare the number of outcomes that succeed vs the number of outcomes that fail. That's not as scary as it sounds. That's exactly what you do when you flip a coin. Think about it.

Here is every possible outcome.

Scenario 1:
Dealer gets an Ace and a 2.
You get a 2.
Dealer flips his 2.
You trade and get his Ace.
You win.

Scenario 2:
Dealer gets a 2 and an Ace.
You get a 2.
Dealer flips his 2.
You trade and get his Ace.
You win.

Scenario 3:
Dealer gets a 2 and a 2.
You get an Ace.
Dealer flips one of his 2's.
You trade and get his other 2.
You lose.

There are only 3 possible scenarios. In 2 of them you win. In 1 of them you lose. It can't be much clearer than that.

I am here. No, I am there.

2007-11-13T14:42:00.001-05:00

I had a very strange experience a few days ago. Last week, I moved my computer from my bedroom to my living room (our home office). It's a corner desk and I set it up the same way in both places, so if you are sitting there, staring at the computer, what you see (keyboard, monitor, pencil cup...) is exactly as it was. It would not be surprising that I got momentarily confused by which room I was in. What DID happen was not only surprising, but even a bit disturbing....

I was playing a computer game the other night when I noticed a light come on in my periphery. I immediately thought
that must be my wife going into the bathroom

but then a louder thought, if "louder" is the right word, responded:
No, you are in the living room. That light had to come from outside or in the dining room.

Then the two thoughts began to argue with each other.
You're in the dining room.
No, you're in the living room.

I could even see a mental picture of the floor plan of my house and mentally feel the two thoughts having a tug of war - a marker was sliding back and forth on the map between the two different locations.

This was not a fleeting experience. It lasted for four of five seconds. I sat there unmoving at my keyboard while my brain fought with itself. I started to get disoriented. I had to force myself to turn my chair and face the direction the light came from in order to determine where the hell I actually was. I looked into the dining room for a few seconds - because it took that long for my brain to decide that it was, indeed, the dining room that I was looking at. For a split second, I saw a dual image of the dining room AND the master bathroom. It was only after staring at it that I determined what it was.

We are in the living room.

I sat there for a second as if I had just woken up from a dream of some kind. Then I laughed it off and went back to playing my game.

A half an hour later, it started to happen again! I could sense two thoughts starting to argue over where I was, but this time, a third thought (me?) mentally yelled for them to "SHUT UP!" At that point, I think I got up and went somewhere else, I don't really remember.

Am I going nuts?

My Experience as a Foster Parent - 2

2007-05-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

The first foster child we took into our home in the summer of 2005. My wife and I were excited, apprehensive and very naive. Our 7 year old daughter, Nicole (not here real name) was excited to have a sister.

Carsey (not her real name) was 11 years old. She was the oldest of four children and had been place in charge of them by her mother. Her mother had a substance abuse problem, but we were never given any details about the nature of her problem. Her father was not part of her life.
Carsey had been diagnosed with ADHD, ODD and RAD. She was also mildly mentally retarded.
Carsey told me that when she was 5 years old, her mother had put her and one of her younger sisters into the bathtub and told Carsey that she was going down the hall for a few minutes and to give her sister a bath. She also told her not to answer the door. Sometime later, Carsey heard someone at the door, and despite her mother's warning, answered it. It was a policeman.
Presumably, the policeman called CPS and Carsey and her brothers and sisters were removed. When Carsey came to our home, she had been in St Joe's residential facility for over two years. I don't know where she had been before that, though she did mention that she had been in other foster homes, had lived with some relatives and had spent some time in another facility besides St Joe's. She had not seen her mother or brothers and sisters in several years.
Our first visit with her was a supervised visit at St Joe's. Carsey started calling us mom and dad right away and started referring to Nicole as her sister. On our second visit, we took her to our home for a few hours and went out to eat at McDonald's (Carsey's choice). She ordered chicken strips with ranch dressing, ate them all and asked if she could have another order. I complied. I remember thinking at the time that they must not feed these poor orphans very well.
When we finally moved her into our home, Carsey did not want to sleep alone and said she was afraid of the dark. We tried to make her as comfortable as possible and when Nicole volunteered to let her sleep in her room, we decided to let her sleep there. We were a little nervous about it, but since we were in the next room, we didn't think there was any danger.
Carsey was constantly seeking attention and was very clingy with me. She had occasional out vocal outbursts and one time when I sternly told her that her behavior was not acceptable, she curled up on the floor in a fetal position with her hands over her face.
She was taking several medications for ADHD and, at first never gave us any difficulty when it was time for her to take her medicine.
After the first week or so, her behavior began to change. She became defiant at times and less clingy. She started teasing Nicole. One time she got upset with my wife and went and hid under the bed for an hour. She claimed she didn't know left from right.
We moved her into her own room, across the hall from Nicole, and she did not like that.
She became more defiant over time, started refusing to take her medicine and would curse when she got upset. She would play board games with my wife and try to make up the rules if she started loosing.
Two activities that she liked to do were swimming and basketball. We have a pool in our back yard and she would swim as often as she could. When I got home from work, she and I would play basketball in the driveway. One day, while we were playing basketball, she accidentally broke a window on the garage door. She got very scared and was convinced that my wife was going to be very angry and beat her. I tried to explain to her that she was not in trouble and that I saw what had happened. She tried to stop me from telling my wife about it, physically blocking me from entering the house. When I did get to tell my wife, and she agreed that it was an accident and that no one was in trouble, Carsey became uncontrollably hyperactive. She ran around the house laughing. Something changed at that moment because from then on, she was almost unmanageable. She refused to follow any directions or requests. It was time for her afternoon medicine and I eventually had to go and grab her and carry her back into the kitchen and make her take it. After that she went into her room and shouted obscenities for about a half an hour.
School started a few days later and my wife and I were hoping that school would turn her behavior around. It didn't. Carsey fell into a pattern of being defiant with my wife clingy with me and mean to our daughter. Nicole spent most of her time avoiding Carsey, usually hiding in her room.
We took her for respite for the first time that weekend. Respite is when the foster child is placed in another foster home for at last part of one day. It is designed to give foster parents and foster children a break from each other. When we took her to respite, she asked if she was going back to St Joe's. She asked it in such a way that she sounded as if she was expecting it or even wanting it.
By the end of the next week, she was acting out in class as well as acting out at home. We could no longer manage her behavior and had to make the decision to remove her. She was in our home for only 9 weeks.

A few days before she left, I was helping Carsey do her schoolwork. She was in a special education class and the work level was far below what a typical 11 year old should be able to do. The worksheet she had was a set of two digit addition problems, the point of the lessen was about carrying digits over to the next column. There were 24 problems 4 rows by 6 columns. She struggled with the first problem and got very frustrated. I helped her and coached her through the next 2. She seemed to be getting it and Nicole was asking for help so I told Carsey to work on that row while I helped Nicole. When I returned my attention to Carsey, not more than a minute later, I was hoping that if I was lucky, she would have finished that row. She showed me her paper. She had finished the entire sheet and gotten every answer correct. This made me realize just how much her behavior was damaging her own development.

Carsey was afraid of the police. Whenever we saw a police car on the street, she would hide in the backseat and tell us we had to run away before the policeman got us.

She showed many signs of RAD, ADHD and ODD. I have no way on knowing how much of this was learned behavior and how much was caused by brain damage do to her mother's in vitro drug use.

Looking back, we now realize just how much Carsey manipulated us. We allowed her to turn out home into a place where none of us wanted to be. She had no intention of staying in our home. I remember her telling me more than once that she wanted to go back to her real mother. I think that she somehow got it into her mind that if she got rejected from enough foster homes, they would eventually send her back to her birth mother. As painful as the experience became, we did learned a lot and were much more prepared for the next child we fostered.

My Experience as a Foster Parent - 1

2007-05-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

Note: in order to protect the privacy of individuals, all person's names have been changed.

For over a year, my wife and I have been foster parents in our home state of Kentucky. I have decided to post information about our experience partly because we get a lot of questions and partly because it is helpful to talk about it, even if it is just in the blogosphere. Some topics are difficult to talk about without using blunt language, so expect occasional crudeness.

My wife and I got into foster care hoping to adopt a child. We have a daughter of our own and wanted to have another child, but biology did not seem to be cooperating. Since we were both in our early forties, we thought that pursuing fertility treatments might be risky. Domestic adoption is very expensive and can take years. Foreign adoption is faster, but also expensive and, in many ways, riskier. Since we knew that there were children here in the U.S. in need of good homes, we decided to look into foster care, specifically, a private institution, St Joseph's Children's Home.
I cannot say enough good things about the people that we have dealt with at St Joe's. They have always been highly professional and uncommonly compassionate. They work very hard and go well beyond the call of duty whenever the need arises. They bend over backwards trying to fill the needs of both children and parents and never forget what is in the child's best interest. These are truly wonderful people.

My wife and I went through several weeks of training starting in January of 2005. Much of this information is from those training sessions. Some is from my personal experience and some is information passed onto me first hand by other foster parents. I am not a psychologist or a social worker or a mental health expert. I am only presenting information as it was presented to me and how I understood it.

How children end up in foster care.
Sometimes, through a combination of bad choices and bad fortune, parents find themselves in situations they are not equipped to handle either emotionally or physically. Other times, parents have children they are simply unwilling to care for. When this happens, the children end up being abused by the parents. If someone reports the abuse to authorities, Child Protective Services (CPS) may intervene and remove the child from the home.
Children end up in the foster care system after CPS has removed them from their homes. This is not something that is done lightly. CPS will only remove a child if they feel the child's welfare is in immediate danger. Abuse can take many forms including physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse or neglect.
Sexual abuse covers a wider area of activity than most people realize. When people think of sexual abuse, they generally think of child molestation (the rape of a child.) While the term certainly covers that, it also covers other activity, like inappropriately exposing kids to sexual situations (ex: having orgies in the same room, showing them pornography...). Also note that child molestation does not differentiate between a willing and unwilling child. The law assumes that anyone under the age of consent (16) cannot willingly engage in sex.
The state only breaks up families in extreme situations. After the child (or children) are removed, the parent(s) go before a judge and given conditions that must be met in order to have their children returned to them. These generally include counseling, and/or training. The programs are rigorous and may be difficult but are not impossible to complete. During this time, the judge may award temporary custody to an extended family member (whose home must qualify for foster care), but if no suitable relative comes forward, the child is placed in foster care. If possible, sibling groups are kept together. If a child has medical or behavioral issues that make foster care impossible, they are moved to a residential facility where they are cared for by facility staff (St Joe's has their own residential facility). Visits, often supervised, are arranged between the parent(s) and the children.
To qualify as a certified foster home, the parents must go through a training course and the house is inspected to make sure it is safe, has electricity, running water, the proper number of smoke alarms, etc.
A state social worker is assigned to the case and monitors the parent's progress as well as the child's welfare. State social workers in Kentucky are often overwhelmed by caseload. The last state social worker I talked to had over 60 cases. That's not 60 children. That's 60 families - each with potentially two adults and several children.
If the adults complete whatever program the judge assigns to them, the families are reunited and continue on with their lives, though they have continued access to resources, such as counseling, for some time after that. If the adults fail to comply with the judges order, then the state will pursue a Termination of Parental Rights (TPR). Many adults will fight the TPR and may get their time extended if the judge feels they are putting forth a good faith effort. Others will voluntarily give up their rights. The entire process, from CPS taking a child from a home to a TPR, generally takes about 18 months. Once a TPR has been issued, the parent looses all legal rights to the child and is no longer allowed to have contact.
After a TPR, the child becomes a ward of the state. If possible, they are placed in foster care with a foster family looking to adopt a child. Foster parents can start the adoption process once a TPR is finalized. The adoption process may take anywhere from 2 months to a year.

As previously mentioned, the state tries very hard to keep siblings groups together, but this is not always in the best interest of the child. Sometimes older children abuse younger children just as they were abused by their parents. This abuse usually continues if the children are kept together. Other times, a single child may report the abusive behavior of the parents and when the state removes them from the home, the other children will blame that child for what has happened. That child becomes he target of resentment and anger from their siblings.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children in state custody. This is at least partly due to the rise in drug abuse in Kentucky, particularly with Methamphetamine. Very often, drug addicted expectant mothers will continue to take drugs throughout their pregnancy. This can be extremely damaging to the children causing both physical and mental disabilities. Some amount of mental retardation is fairly common along with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD).

Emotional and behavioral problems can be caused by poor or abusive parenting.
When a child is first born, there is a cycle of dependency that happens between it and it's caregiver (mom, dad, daycare worker...).
The process is very simple:
1) Baby senses that something is wrong (hungry, thirsty, stinky, in pain...)
2) Baby cries
3) Caregiver arrives
4) Caregiver addresses and fixes the problem (feeds baby, changes diaper...)
5) Baby senses that everything is OK and stops crying
6) Time Passes
7) go to step 1

This cycle repeats thousands and thousands of times in the first months of a baby's life. Through this process, the baby learns several important lessons:
1) I can effect the outside world (when I cry things happen)
2) Adults are here to help me
3) I am worth being taken care of

This assumes that the caregiver is doing a good job and the babies needs are being met. People are human and make mistakes, so caregivers don't always get it right the first time they show up, but in general, they are always making things better for the child.

However, if the caregiver is doing a poor job, the cycle starts to fall apart in step 3. The caregiver may ignore the baby, stop trying to help too soon, or, if they are physically abusive, hit the baby, shake the baby or yell at the baby. When this happens, the baby never gets to step 5. Obviously, if the caregiver NEVER did the right thing, the baby would die. But, what often happens is that the caregiver does enough to keep the baby alive but fails so often that the baby doesn't learn the lessons that the good caregiver's baby learned.
An abused/neglected child might learn:
1) Nothing I do effects the outside world (crying may bring help, harm or nothing so it is not effective)
2) Grownups are here to harm me as much as help me
3) Grownups are not predictable
4) Grownups cannot be trusted
5) I am not worthy of being taken care of

As the child grows up, the abuse can manifest in several different ways, often in combinations. Add to this, problems caused in vitro drug abuse (ADD/ADHD, mental retardation) and you have a child that will have a very difficult time in life.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
If a baby thinks it cannot effect the world around it, it does not learn about cause and effect. The world is just a series of unrelated events that happen for no reason. As they get older, they can't help but get past some of this when dealing with the physical world (gravity is pretty constant), but when dealing with people, the lessons they learned as a child are very hard to change. It's much easier to learn a new behavior where none exists than to replace an existing behavior. RAD sets in when they cannot learn to properly attach emotionally to another person.

Complicating things, children have a built in attachment to their parents, even abusive ones. Their distrust of adults often gets worse when CPS enters the picture. From the child's perspective, a bunch of adults come in and take them away from the only adults they know - the abusive parents they are attached to.
Most of the time, it is not discovered that a child is being neglected until it is 5 or six years old. Younger children can be shielded from the outside world. It is generally not until they go to school and their teachers see them and know that something is obviously wrong. So, you have a child that has been living in a highly dysfunctional environment for 5 or 6 years and then a bunch of other adults take it away from its parents. A daycare worker might also recognize the symptoms of abuse but these kids generally don't end up in daycare. They are generally left alone for hours on end while the parents (or parent) goes out and does whatever they do.

Because the child has been neglected, they have had to learn to do things for themselves. Their primary concern is for themselves. They care nothing for other people other than as a means to obtain what they want. RAD kids will steal and lie and think nothing of it. They place no value in other people. There is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" there is only "what is good for me" and "what is not good for me."

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
ODD is simple to recognize: the child will not follow directions and no amount of talking or negotiating will change their mind. They refuse to bow to authority, even when it is obviously in their own best interest. Their defiance often borders on the absurd. One of my foster children had ODD. At night time, I often read to both children, sitting in the hall between their rooms. One night, instead of getting into bed, she sat on the floor. I told her I would start reading when she got into bed. She told me she couldn't get into to bed because she wanted to sit on the floor. I told her that she knew the routine and that I didn't read until she and our biological daughter were both in bed. She continued to refuse and got more and more upset, claiming that she wanted me to read, but did not want to get into her bed. I remember her sitting there in tears saying that she wanted me to read and me telling her that I would be happy to read as she got up off the floor and into her bed. She just sat there and screamed "but, I CAN'T!" At other times, we had long fights about her not wanting to wear a raincoat when it was poring down rain or not wanting to wear any coat at all when it was below freezing and there was snow on the ground. While they don't act like this all the time, when they do, they act as if they are compelled to defy authority and are unable to comply.

Parentification
Sometimes, neglected children are thrust into a parenting role. Both of my foster children were the oldest children in their birth family and put in charge of their younger siblings. This happened to each of them before they were six years old. Once this role gets entrenched, it can be difficult for them to behave as normal children. They can have a hard time playing with other children as equals. Parentification can also take the form of children taking care of parents. The child may be taking care of the home while the adult is sick, drunk or in a drug induced stupor.

Somewhere in geekland.....

2006-08-04T22:40:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in geekland, this conversation is happening - right now...

Jack or Wesley?

Wesley.

Wesley? No way a guy with a name like Wesley is cooler than Jack. Jack is way cooler.

Sorry. Jack is a gay stoner. Wesley was all man - a man's man! Besides, Wesley was also the Dread Pirate Roberts. What's cooler than having your own title?

Being in a movie trilogy. Anyway, the guy's girlfriend was named Buttercup. How lame is that?

As opposed to Jack's girlfriend's name. What was it? I forget. That's right. He didn't have one, the vomitous mass!

Jack wasn't tied down to any one woman. He was too cool for that. And you have to admit, Jack would totally waste him in a fight.

Are you serious? Jack would run away like the sissyboy that he is. Wesley was undefeated. He even bested a giant!

Dude, Professional wrestling is totally fake. Besides, Johnny Depp is a big star AND now the poster child of cool actors. Wesley was played by...who?

Carey Elwes - who also played Robin Hood - with a genuine british accent.

Oh sure, in a bad Mel Brooks movie!

Doesn't matter. Robin Hood is an icon of cool, so by association, Wesley is cool. What else did Johnny do in the genre? Got cut up by Freddy Krueger - a villian that wasn't even real. Johnny's got swords, but Carey's got bows and swords. He'd toast crybaby in a fight!

Not if he brought his scissor hands!

Good point.

Will or Inigo?

Will.

What?! Are you nuts?

I Don't Get It.

2005-11-17T20:50:00.000-05:00

I don't get it.
There are some things people do that I just don't understand. There are lots of things people do that I don't agree with but that's different. I know why they do them, I just think it's wrong. But, there are some things people do that make no sense to me.

For example, falling down pants. There has to be a term for this but I don't know what it is. You've seen what I am talking about - men who wear their pants so low they look like they are falling down.
I don't include boys in this category (and I've never seen a girl wearing pants this way) because boys, especially teenage boys, will do things for no reason other than to see if they can get away with it. Their thought processes aren’t always well-defined. Sometimes they do things for no reason at all. I know. I used to be one.
If you don't believe me, just ask a teenage boy.

"Why did you paint pink clovers on the garage door?"
"I don't know."

"Why did you throw glass bottles at those mailboxes?"
"No reason."

I'm talking about men, grown men, who wear their pants so loose that they have to constantly hang onto them to keep them from falling down. I'm not going to berate them for looking stupid, (though I think they do) because fashion is a personal choice. Besides, I'm no fashion guru. Maybe "idiot" is now considered cool. I'm talking about the sheer impracticality of the whole thing. Why wear clothes that require you to consantly use one hand to keep them in place? It's like tying one hand behind your back, just for the sake of fashion. And it seems like the lower they are, without actually falling down, the cooler they are. I suspect that actually having them fall down would be the greatest of social blunders, sort of a Price Is Right, "closest without going over" kind of thing, which makes me wonder, if you can put them in the lowest possible spot without having them fall down, do you win both showcases?

A lot of idiotic trends come and go quickly, but I've seen the fallng down pants (I really need to find that term) for at least ten years now. It looks like they are here to stay. It sounds like something from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"A certain subgroup of humans began wearing their pants in such a fashion that they constantly needed to hold them up with one hand. This made life difficult as it left them only the one remaining hand to perform all of life's other tasks, such as eating, hunting, operating a Segway, cleaning telephones and manipulating one's towel. However, after several generations, evolution solved this dilemna and a new subspecies of humans evolved that had actually regrown their prehensile tails (which became accessible due to the lowered wasteline) thus giving an appendage to assist the lone unoccupied hand, whilst the other hand continued to hold up said pants."

Another thing I don't get is smoking. I understand why people keep smoking (nicotene-duh), I just don't understand why people start smoking to begin with. Smoking will eventually kill you. The only time it doesn't is when something else kills you first. And I'm not talking about a nice, quick, painless, late in life, died peacefully in your sleep, kind of death. I'm talking about a slow, painful, lingering, late middle age, hooked up to lots of machines in a hospital by tubes and wires, kind of death. Doing something that is certain to bring this about seems pretty stupid to me. I mean, if you just want to kill yourself, why use a process that is slow and makes you suffer along the way? It's like suicide on a 401k plan. Start smoking early, save for years, and have an early death from cancerous compound interest. (If we could only find ways to get people adicted to saving money, we could end our budget problems. Maybe nicotine with each deposit?)

While some smokers are shy and sneak cigarettes when they think no one's looking, others are the most selfish and inconsiderate group of people I've ever stereotyped. They either don't know (or don't care) that while they may enjoy lighting one up, smoking bothers everyone else around them. They spew out smokey stench everywhere and then have the nerve to get offended when people ask them to stop. Worse yet, the smoke sticks to everything and smells long after the cigarette is gone, even on the people that were unlucky enough to be nearby.

What many people don't realise is that the brain can block out smells if they are constant but not overpowering. And it's not like a background noise that you learn to ignore but can still hear if you try. No, the blocked out smell might as well not be there because once you block it out you can't smell it no matter how hard you try. The only way to get past this is to remove the smell and stay away from it for some time. Then, when you encounter it later, you can smell it just like anyone else. I know this because I worked in a seafood shop for six years. I reaked of dead fish all the time, but only realised it when I came back from vacation. I smelled like fish. My clothes smelled like fish. My car smelled like fish. It was awful. Smokers have the same problem, but they never take a vacation from smoking (nicotene - remember?). They smell like smoke. Their clothes smell like smoke. Their cars smell like smoke. Their homes smell like smoke. I often wonder if their pets even smell like smoke. Whenever I spend anytime with smokers, I have to go home, throw my clothes in the wash and take a shower. It's like I've been marked by a dog.

I would love to get a device that releases fumes that smell like dead fish. Then, the next time one of these selfish smokers lights up next to me, I'll spew out dead halibut stench and dare him to say something. If he does, I'll tell him to go home, throw his clothes in the wash and take a shower.

At this point, I would like to aplogize to any smokers out there reading this that are older than me (I was born in 1964) who might be angered by my opinion. You see, all of my life, thanks mostly to public service TV commercials, I've known that smoking will kill you. However, if you are at least a little bit older than me or grew up outside the US, it's possible that you started smoking before you knew how bad it was for you. Therefore, smoking doesn't automatically make you a selfish idiot and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. However, if you are younger than me and born here, or are my age and started smoking well into adulthood, then I'm sorry, but the evidence speaks for itself.

Here is something I often wondered about. Why is it that people never get busted for throwing cigarette butts out of car windows? If I tossed my gum wrapper out the window and a cop saw me, I'd get busted for littering - a $100 fine according to all the signs I see along the highway. I don't see very many gum wrappers along roadsides, but walk down any road in rural America and you can find cigarette butts by the bushel. I'm surprised that no one makes gum wrappers that look like cigarette butts.

How do people even afford to smoke? I hear people talk about a onepack (or even twopack) a day habit. Don't cigarettes cost like $3 a pack? That's $90 a month. I've had electric bills less than that. That's $1095 a year. I bet most smokers don't put that in their other 401k.

Something else I've often wondered about, how do smokers get anything done when they are constantly carrying something small, delicate and on fire? They can't set a lit cigarette down just anywhere. Do they do everything with one hand? (There could be another entry in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about this but it would probably involve a prehensile nose instead of a prehensile tail.) I wonder how many people who smoke also wear falling down pants?

Tony Dumas walked down the street, body cocked to one side, left hand wedged in his pocket tightly gripping his extra baggy jeans, right hand cupping a lit Marlboro, slightly swinging. Tony had spent many hours transforming this unnatural posture into a cool and confident strut. He needed a cool name to go with his cool walk and since his first name was really Ian, which he thought could not have been less cool, he started going by the short version of Anthony, his middle name, a much cooler choice.

He stopped and took a drag from his cigarette, acting as if he was checking out something in the store window. All he was checking out was his own reflection. He practiced his long slow exhale one time, just to make sure he could still look cool doing it, then went back to pretending to window shop. Yes, he was still cool.

He took one last celebratory drag and stomped out his cigarette. Reflexively, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack. He noticed the surgeon general's warning and ignored it as always. Those things were for suckers and wimps and besides this came from the same government that faked a moon landing so how could they be trusted anyhow? He was going to die someday. Why not enjoy himself before he went?

Not wanting to drop his pants, he stuck a single cigarette through his lips, swapped the cigarette pack for a lighter, and lit up. He could see everything in the reflection of the glass, including the fine young lady checking him out as she walked behind him. Yes, he was completely cool.

After pausing for a well calculated delay, he turned and strutted up the street in her direction. She had was just sat down on the bench at the bus stop by the corner and was digging something out of her purse. The bus gave Tony lots of opportunities to hook up with her, though he momentarily cursed himself for not being able to afford a better car than the POS that he drove. He could have offered her a ride.

He took another drag as he approached, noting that the bus had rounded the corner and was going to stop. Spotting her looking his way as she stood up, he performed the slow exhale he had just practiced and decided to take a ride on the bus.

"Hey, baby," he called out, in his coolest voice, "save me a seat?"
"Sure," she replied as she inserted a stick of gum into her mouth. "Throw this away for me?" she asked, tossing her empty pack of gum towards him.

Instinctively, Tony let go of his pants with his left hand and stepped forward to catch the flying gum wrapper. His pants immediately began to fall down, so he grabbed them with his other hand, flinging the burning tip of his lit cigarette against the inside of his now exposed thigh. He howled with pain even as toppled face first onto the street, the back of his white boxers now fully exposed.

Desperately trying to find one last way to regain his cool, Ian Anthony Dumas looked up just in time to see the young lady chuckling as she boarded the bus. And as the doors closed, her final comment drifted down to him: "What a dumbass."

I am Mr. Oblivious.

2005-10-25T20:07:00.000-05:00

I am Mr. Oblivious.
My family and friends all call me this and I no longer deny it. Being observant is not my forte. I have no idea what the heck is going on around me sometimes.

This can present problems. I am the kind of guy who burns up because he doesn't notice the fire alarm going off. While I've never crashed through a "Road Closed" barrier, I once drove the wrong way down a one-way street. And the police once evacuated the floor of our building so they could handle a mentally unstable, out-of-control employee. I was working in my cube in the room next door to hers. I found out about it later. Yes, flashing red lights and "Are you sure?" pop-up boxes were invented for people like me.

Worse yet, all those subtle clues that people give when they want you to know something, without actually having to tell you, are generally lost on me. Apparently, thoughts work by osmosis on most other humans, but not me. If you want me to know something, you have to spell it out.

I'm not stupid. I'm not trying to be rude and I'm definitely not mad at you. I'm just oblivious. I didn't realise that when you said
"sit down and we'll talk about this",
you were really saying
"Sit down, shut up and do as I say."

Or when you asked
"not having a good round?",
you really meant
"Your golf game sucks and you're playing too slow. Let me play through."

Or that when you asked
"Is that bread good?"
you really meant
"Stop eating all the bread and save some for someone else, you fat manatee!"

Or, when you stared at me in angry silence, you really meant
"You're late. Your dog peed on the floor - again. The check did NOT come in the mail today. The kids have BOTH been bratty little snots. I'm going out with the girls tonight. You are on your own for dinner. Tell me to go and have a good time or you sleeping on the couch for a week."

However, being oblivious sometimes has its advantages. I generally don't guess wrong about what people are trying to tell we mostly because I don't know when they are trying to send me a message in the first place. Hints don't work, so they always tell me what they need me to know.
And sometimes ignorance is bliss. I'm not bothered when the clerk at the grocery sore treats me a bit rudely, because I didn't notice. A few weeds in the yard won't set me off because all I saw was green. Not many things will tempt me, because I just don't see them. Steal? Steal what? Covet? Well, now that you mention it, I guess that new car is pretty nice. Marital infidelity? Not going to happen. I wouldn't know if a woman was trying to hit on me if she were dancing naked in front of me, shaking a bottle of Viagra and singing "Why don't we do it in the road?"

Sometimes, it just takes a while for things to register. Even when I recognize all the dots, I don't always connect them right away. I often feel like I'm the sheepdog in that classic Bugs Bunny cartoon. ("Hey, that was the fox.") I could be driving through my rural county at night, pass some well lit area on the side of the road and not have it dawn on my for several minutes that I had just passed an alien abduction in progress.

Other times it takes a really long time for me to realize things, or maybe to just to come to grips with things that maybe I've known all along, but didn't want to admit - like the fact that I can be an impulsive, lazy, slob. Or that I start a lot more things than I ever finish. Or that I have a lot of great friends that treat me better than I deserve. Or when I tell my daughter that it's most important that she "try her best", that most of the time I don't try my best. Hindsight may be 20/20, but sometimes my "right-now sight" can't see past the end of its nose.

So the next time you see me and I don't say anything to you, don't assume I'm being rude. It may just be that my eyes have seen you but my brain is too busy working on my next blog entry to listen to them. And if you need me to do you a favor, your best chance of success isn't going to be dropping a hint. Try starting with "can you do me a favor?" And if for some strange reason, you feel the need to hit on me and you're not my wife, you're just wasting everyone's time.

Apple vs Apple

2005-09-20T23:42:00.000-05:00

According to conventional wisdom, history always repeats itself. We may be about to see an example of that in the music business. Long ago, the main push of the record companies was to produce hit singles. Kids bought 45's by the dozen so they could listen to whatever their favorite song was that week. Albums were expensive to make and to buy. Most albums were collections of a few singles with lots of filler tracks thrown on. Other than movie soundtracks or Christmas albums, there was no consistent theme within an album. That all changed with the Beatle's Sergeant Pepper in 1967. The album became an art form. People started listening to albums instead of just songs. (yes, I know the Beatles didn't do it first, but they made it popular, so that's what counts - ask Christopher Columbus.) Selling albums became the main goal. An album could become a big seller with few or no singles.
Many times, the album as a whole was better than the sum of its songs, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, being a prime example. Songs segued one into the next with no break between. They belonged in a certain order. You would never plop the needle down onto "Any Colour You Like". It would sound like a mistake. You had to start back at "Us and Them" (or more likely, way back to "Money") and listen all the way through that side of the album, right to the end of "Eclipse". The only true, proper way to listen to albums like Dark Side of the Moon (or Fragile or Brain Salad Surgery or Leftoverture...) was in the dark, alone, late at night with headphones - not the wimpy little open air headphones they make now but the big heavy over-the-ear, sound-blocking, bass-thumping, looks-like-they-belong-to-the-guy-on-the-airport-runway kind that guaranteed that all you would hear would be the music, not traffic or people talking or the background hum of civilization - just you and the music, the whole music and nothing but the music, so help you God. Amen. (Artificial brain chemistry adjustments were optional.) In that environment, listening to an album could be an experience. And it's all about to go the way pf the eight-track. This is mostly due to MP3's.
Don't get me wrong. I love MP3's. Whether at my computer, in my car or out in the yard with my Nomad, MP3's are about the only way I listen to music. The very first thing I do when I buy a CD is launch Musicmatch and rip it to my harddrive. In fact, my 20 year old receiver died a few months ago and I haven't even thought about replacing it because I couldn't remember when I last used it. Before that, I bought a new car stereo that plays mp3 CD's. I could not hook up the antennae at the time so the radio doesn't work. Since radio sucks (I don't have XM), I haven't missed it. All I have are mp3's.
But thanks to MP3's, everybody (including me) has access to all their friend's album collections, which they can root through, pull out the songs they remember and like (i.e. singles) and stick on their MP3 player of choice. It's no accident that all mp3 players have a shuffle mode (why do you think Apple called their player a Shuffle?). It's like having a radio that only plays your favorite songs with no commercials or annoying DJ's talking over the music.
Enter I-Tunes (Yeah, yeah go ask Chris again). Now, you can just buy the songs you like and skip the rest. Albums will become passé, so the single may about to become king once more. Those other tracks, the ones that were never singles, the ones you learned to love but only after you listened to them a few times because you were too lazy to fast forward to the next single, the ones that became your favorite songs, as opposed to everyone's favorite songs, those other tracks won't get recorded, because there is little point in recording songs that won't get downloaded, at least from a commercial standpoint.
But if history does repeat itself, then someday someone will bring back the album, or something like it. What might that be? DVD audio. Headphones and MP3's all work nicely in stereo, but DVD offers several flavors of surround sound. Perhaps, someday soon, someone will create something in surround sound that is just so new, so original, and/or just so flippin’ cool, that people will flock to get it, stick it in their home theater system, plop down in their favorite chair and marvel at its ingenuity - alone, late at night, with tiny satellites, a center channel speaker, and big thumping subwoofers. Then the album will be king again. I'll be looking forward to it.

Well, that was easy.

2005-09-09T00:44:00.000-05:00

"Dishes done!" (Sorry - Robot Chicken reference).
I have updated my links. I also changed the colors. I'm not that wild about this template either, but it is better than the green one I started with.

Welcome to my blog

2005-09-09T00:14:00.000-05:00

For years, many of my friends have been telling me that I needed to write down my thoughts and opinions. Well, here it is!
Welcome to the Blogosphere, Clint. Go wild.

The first thing I need to do is change this template. It's about as plain as can be. Maybe after that, I'll think of some topics to write about. Hmmm...I could talk about my opinion of Geoprge W, but that's a bit overdone at this point.
I had cancer in 1997. I should write about that.
I had a really awful experience with my local cable company (and by awful, I mean "this is the kind of thing that happens to Ben Stiller in his movies" awful). I should write about that as well.
Anyway, maybe I'll see if I can add some favorite links.