smacky and bucky

I get really creeped out by stories like the woman who "miraculously" had eight children (That's the miracle of irresponsible science, folks). Because either they turn out to be religious nuts thinking God wants them to have a ton of kids, or something like this:

Mother of octuplets already had six children at home. What the hell...? The children at home range in age from 7 to 2. She has six children at home and was on fertility drugs. She lives with her mother and her husband is a contract worker making periodic trips to Iraq (and apparently coming home once a year to impregnate his wife).

I'm all for personal freedom, but I'm also a big believer in personal responsibility. If you're a billionaire and want to have 14 children, fine, get 14 nannies to raise them (Don't tell me love is more important than money in raising 14 kids. In this case, you'd better have lots of BOTH). If you have six children and live with your mother, and your mother's house doesn't have at least 8 and 10 bedrooms, you should probably just raise the six you've got. Don't take fertility drugs to have more.

I can't understand the mindset. Does she have that mental disorder that makes you always need to be holding a baby, so when one gets too old you need to have another?

Is she starting a football team?

She's only 30. Is she going to have more children later? She's still physically capable.

I wonder if the father's insurance covered the seven weeks the mother had to stay in the hospital before giving birth, after she refused to selectively abort any of the fetuses that "took." I wonder if his insurance is covering the TWO nurses who are caring for each child (What must 16 nurses cost per day???) for the next seven weeks they have to stay in the hospital. My wife got one scan and it cost $1,900. (Thank goodness for insurance.) If one scan is $1,900, 7 weeks of medical care for a mother plus 7 weeks for eight children must total close to $1,000,000. Seriously. SIXTEEN NURSES just for this family!

Yes, I'm hinting I would be really pissed if I lived in California and discovered my taxes were footing the bill for this woman's decision to have this many children.

I would also investigate the doctor who approved fertility drugs for a mother of six.

I'm not being sexist. The father of the children should definitely support these FOURTEEN children. I'm also not being racist. I don't know what race or religion they are, and don't care. It makes no difference.

Work has been steady, bordering on busy, since the new year started, so I haven't updated much. I'm finishing up that Elvis book I mentioned a few posts ago. Give me a break, it's like 600 pages! Speaking of Elvis, I'm listening to the closing night Vegas show from February 1974. His ex-wife Priscilla and then-girlfriend Linda were both in the audience, sitting together(!). He supposedly makes a comment about Mike Stone, the karate instructor Priscilla was dating then, so I'm keeping an ear out for that.

We've been going to the dog park quite a bit, as the dogs freaking love it. We went three times last weekend. Kirby usually picks out the largest dog and attempts to chase it; sometimes they play along and sometimes they don't.

L has surgery scheduled for February 10. It's routine, but requires general anesthesia, so... tense about that.

My mother is having hip replacement surgery on March 4, which she has totally needed for over a year, so it will be a relief for her not to have the pain of two bones rubbing together, with the nerves in between being pinched.

So yeah, I'm doing fine, just worrying about family.

Oh, Kate, we're thinking of a trip to Memphis and would like some tips. Definitely doing Graceland. It's like the Grand Canyon. Must see it.

We had some really excellent Chinese food last night to celebrate Chinese New Year. Yum. Leftovers for lunch today, with fingers crossed for a snow day tomorrow.

Finally, our cat Buzz apparently gets cold. Yesterday he climbed under a blanket and snuggled in.

With this show and The Office, Thursday nights at 9 are NBC's again (for me).

Best line of the night:

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) to Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin): "Are you psyching yourself up in front of a mirror? I do that sometimes when I'm going to a party where I don't know many people."

Cut to Liz in front of a mirror: "Stop sweating so much, you idiot! What's wrong with you, stupid bitch!"

Second best line of last night's episode:

Liz (after dropping a 2-foot long Lego train): "Sorry! I dropped it when I was pretending it was my penis! Ro-bot Pe-nis!"

You can watch the full episode on the NBC site HERE and I totally recommend it.

And of course she danced around in a bra to put the embarrassment spotlight on herself... which was nice of her.

What do you get when you cross Deliverance and Jaws?*

Our office is populated by a lot of editors (between the books and the journals). Someone brought in a magnetic poetry set of famous movie quotes, and set it up on the metal cabinets in the kitchen. We can't stop playing with it, or checking to see what new phrases have been created. Had to take a pic of one I saw this morning:

In case you don't get it, the line from Jaws is "You're gonna need a bigger boat," and the line from Deliverance is "He's got a real pretty mouth, don't he?"


(Shudder. Cripes, that movie is disturbing, by the way. Poor Ned Beaty.)



*A sodomizing shark. Also acceptable is a hillbilly who eats tourists.

...that I have a copy of Elvis Presley's social security card in my wallet? It's true:



You know what's really strange? I don't even have a copy of my own social security card in my wallet. If I remember correctly, I gave it to a college girlfriend (who I discovered just had her first baby... weird!).

Yeah, I am becoming a blog slacker. But I'm still twittering and on Facebook. Let's do a proper update here, shall we?

Starting second week back at work, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how much I've accomplished in six days of work. Lots of projects moving forward. Yay!

We have a four-day weekend coming up, with MLK Day and the city shutdown (pretty much literally) for the inauguration the next day, with streets closed and millions wandering around to get a glimpse of Obama. We're staying in town, after deciding trying to return Tuesday would probably be a nightmare. I guess we'll stock up on food and beer and watch the inauguration on TV, which is a little ironic since we live about eight miles from the White House.

What am I reading? Well, thanks for asking. I'm reading this:

This is a THICK book (about 400 pages) made up of interviews with three guys who were "cronies" of Elvis, basically working for and kissing his ass his entire life. Needless to say, they saw a lot and heard a lot, working and traveling with him. I'm going to save comments about it until I finish, but so far the book seems honest without being fawning, revealing without being grotesque. One of the three guys (Billy Smith) was Elvis's first cousin. That had to be a strange situation, answering to your cousin's every need.

I'm really curious to find out what these guys did after Elvis died and their decades-long jobs of taking care of Elvis were gone. Did they get regular jobs? The adjustment period had to be freaky, when you're used to staying in penthouse suites in Vegas, traveling by private jet, and basically living with Elvis in Graceland.

This won't be a long post looking back, or ahead for that matter. I'm back in the office after a glorious two weeks out, and I need to clear some crap off my desk. But i wanted to take a minute to post a few more pics, in no particular order:






One neat little thing I received from my mother-in-law was a deck of cards from the Treasure Island casino (Apologies for the slight out-of-focus shot. The plastic wrap is making it hard to auto-focus with my cell phone.) The deck was used on the casino floor and retired (most likely after one day of use). The casinos then either cut a corner off all the cards in the deck or mark them in some way, then sell them. Ebay lists hundreds of auctions and sales for bulk decks. People sometimes complain you can't play with the cards if they're marked, but they've really missed the point. You don't buy the deck to play with, and it's unlikely I'll ever open the deck since that would also remove the sticker that says "This Deck of Cards Was Used in Actual Play in This Fabulous Casino." No, I don't know why they used title caps.