Why I can't hate Rob & Amber

Reality shows don't always bring out the best in people. Which is why we watch, right? I mean, would it really be that fun to see hours and hours of cooperation?

I'm enjoying Survivor, and dabble in the occasional Real World/Road Rules challage, but my favorite of the genre has to be The Amazing Race. The Race puts a different spin on reality, pitting couple against couple (and, once, family against family -- but I'm trying to forget that blah season). These relationships, be they friendships, marriages, dating, etc., are either forged in the heat of competition or just flame out. Yelling is one thing, and it can get downright unpleasant, especially when it's followed by a slap. But usually, it's just the entertaining kind of static, and good pairs work through it.

I am a little surprised to be saying this, but Rob and Amber, the arrogant Bostonian and the pretty girl who fell in love on Survivor All-Stars, set a great example for couples in reality TV. It's moderately annoying that they're whoring themselves in all kinds of ways -- they had a televised wedding and show on Fox Reality that should have been called Unsubtle Product Placement instead of Against the Odds. But they seem to genuinely love (and like) each other. They're tough competitors, but they don't chew on each other when things go south. That's not to say that their interactions lack drama: They don't. Rob and Amber don't always agree, and they're arrogant. They're also not afraid to lie, which they point out is not against the rules.

After winning the first three legs of The Amazing Race All-Stars, they got eliminated, and I miss them. And after reading this article, I can't wait to see what they'll do next.

Cougs ready to dance!

I follow sports less and less with each passing day, but I can't help but be proud of my Cougs, who are taking part in the NCAA basketball tournament/big-time gambling fest, starting Thursday.

The game is at the odd time of 11:40 or something like that (the link I'm attaching has the Eastern time listed). So I won't necessarily be watching, but I'll be rooting for my alma mater to surprise everyone as they have all season, when they were predicted to finish last.

Here are some interesting tidbits about their Cougs, and their opponent, Oral Roberts University. (I'd be rooting for anyone to be ORU, but I will especially enjoy it if it is the Cougs.)

(A special addition to my joy -- the Huskies weren't even invited to the NIT tournament, which is for the also-rans. They had a great run in the NCAA tourney last year, then the bottom fell out, in no small part because their sparkplug, Nate Robinson, left the team for NBA riches. Of course, he's on the Knicks, so he's not doing a lot of winning.)

Two days away from the Internet, and I'm just a little twitchy

So, I took something resembling a vacation. I've not been at work since Thursday, though I did sign on to my work email, etc., on Friday and Sunday (briefly). This is the longest I've been separated from my work stuff for at least eight months.

And it's been .... OK. I'm ready to get back at it. Have eased back in to Web connection by looking at some of my fallbacks: seattlepi.com, deadspin.com and MSNBC.com. Will log on tomorrow before I hop the bus, so I can deal with my email on the ride up to work.

Saturday was the boys' fourth birthday party, so I spent Friday getting ready. Sunday was "head to mountain cabin" day. We finally hit the road around 3 p.m., after hours of preparation (packing, fretting, procrastinating and playing with our new birthday presents). The cabin, specifically, Bear Mountain Lodge was really, really cool. We'll go back for sure -- just not at this time of year when winter stuff has melted away and spring stuff has yet to begin.

We got the last sleigh ride of the season, a sodden, muddy affair. The best thing about it was our driver, George, who had a waxed, curly mustache and an interesting way of looking at the world. He loves his dog. He thinks people ascribe too many emotions to horses (though, giving in our anthropomorphization, he compared them to teenagers who just need to be kept busy or they'll get into trouble). He's not too bugged by global warming, though he seems to figure it's inevitable.

We stayed at the cabin with our friends Cara and Lori and their daughter Casey, who was also born thanks to the contribution of California Cryobank donor 3387. They're really cool people, who we obviously have a lot in common with. We met on the Rosie cruise last summer and though 3387 provided our initial connection, we would be pals without it. In fact, we're happier not dwelling on this genetic happenstance.

We'll tell the boys someday about their special bond with their friend Casey. I'm interested to see what they make of it. We believe it will be their relationship to define, not ours.

Happy birthday, Eddie and Chas!

I am so tired, I can't move from my chair. Can't turn on the TV. All I can do is blog because I have the computer right in front of me, and my fingers still work (if not my brain). The boys had their fourth birthday party today, at Max Gymnastics.

First, I never want to have a party at my house again. It was wonderful to have things just taken care of, and they were well taken care of by Cheryl's niece Delsa, who owns the gym. The kids had a blast, playing and goofing around.

Eddie and Chas received a mountain of presents that almost didn't fit in the van. Seriously.

We had a fabulous cake made with lots of love and no small amount of obsession and stress by the boys' cousin Heather and auntie Cathy.

We had friends from preschool, friends from Ohio, and family from all around. It really went well, and I'm not just saying that because I'm exhausted.

Now the little shits are refusing to sleep. I wish I had their energy.

I think I was born to be a South Park character

So, while doing some background work for a South Park promotion, I stumbled upon this fun little web site: http://www.sp-studio.de/

And I made the image you see at left, which I think is a rather astonishing likeness. It helps that I have cartoon-friendly features, like glasses and long, messy hair.

To read what I wrote about it for work, check out this link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/plog/post.html/ref=cm_blog_pl/104-1713344-7462300?ie=UTF8&pt=personalBlog&aid=PlogMyCustomersAgent&ot=customer&pd=1173296149.889&pid=PMCASDQOJGOVEX58at1173294686&iid=ASDQOJGOVEX58

The kind of toy-grubbing scum I used to be

I used to collect action figures. Which means I collected toys. Which isn't so bad until you realize I did this in my 20s and early 30s. But I had lesbian impulses to sublimate.

I was once part of the sad, sad group that stood outside Toys R Us at 9:25, waiting for the doors to open so that we could rush in and get our Star Wars figures, our Hot Wheels toys, our Xena figures, etc. I did not collect all of these things, but I got into my own crap (mostly Xena and female action figures of pretty much any type, including Laura Linney from Congo -- betcha didn't know Laura Linney had an action figure!).

Anyhoo, I relived this obsession a bit when I had a few free moments the other morning. I had to run an errand near a Toys R Us, and wandered in for a few minutes to see if I might want to pick up any last-minute goodies before the boys' birthday party. I went to the Cars area and saw a guy speaking what sounded like Russian into a cell phone ear clip. He looked with great suspiciousness at me, and eyed the cars I'd selected (not really rare ones, I later learned).

"Do you have anything you might want to trade? I am looking for a Chick Hicks," he said. Though it sounded more like "Cheeck Heeks." He also said it was for his kid, but I saw right through that. He made small talk by telling me that the really good ones don't even make it to the shelf, they get grabbed by employees, who make extra scratch selling rarities on the secondary market. I knew this happened, though I didn't know what a hot commodity Cars toys were and are. I declined his offer of a trade, as I pretty much had what I needed and felt sufficiently skeeved out just being near him.

Then, in line, I ran into some guys with armloads of Hot Wheels. One of them, feigning small talk, complimented my choice of Cars and asked if I needed a Hamm. This is a car version of the piggy bank character from Toy Story (don't ask -- it's complicated). I declined. My boys like the race cars, not the Carsworld spin on famous Pixar/Disney characters from prior movies.

I used to be like those guys. I tell myself I'm different now: I'm not buying for me, I'm not obsessed with getting a mint package (as the package will just get ripped open anyway). But the pursuit of Cars and, to a lesser extent, Thomas trains, stirs this addictive part of my nature that scares me a little.

Now I need to find a DJ.

From gray to ... purple?

OK, so rather than get my hair colored like a grownup, I decided to apply Manic Panic to the grays at my temples. MP is a semi-permanent, semi-punk hair coloring option, one that I applied years ago to no avail (my hair was just too dark for it to show).

Well, no my hair is not entirely too dark. So it's now black-ish ... and if you look close, also purple. It makes me smile to think of it, 'cause it's just so silly. The key question is: What will I do when I have enough grays for the wacky colors to really show?

Happy Birthday Ms. Pac-Man!

Happy Birthday to the best video game ever! I really bonded with Ms. P. Brings back happy memories of going to the Starbase One arcade with my Mom.

By Ian Hodder
For TODAYshow.com

Don't call Ms. Pac-Man a fad. Leg warmers and Rubik's Cubes, those were fads. The "femme fatale of the game world," as she was initially advertised, remains a superstar 25 years after shooting to fame in 1982.
Ms. Pac-Man is a master of reinvention, hopping from platform to platform to keep her celebrity fresh. She established herself on arcade consoles (25 cents per play) and today celebrates her 25th birthday with an iPod version of her iconic game ($4.99 per download at iTunes).
Not too shabby for a character once dismissed as derivative. Ms. Pac-Man was inspired, of course, by her beau Pac-Man, created in 1979 by the Japanese company Namco. The yellow fellow's better half hit arcades three years later, sporting red lips, major eyelashes, and that cute little red bow.

In terms of game play, Ms. Pac-Man is similar to her sweetie, though faster-paced; with four different mazes, featuring "warp tunnels" that connect opposite sides; and so-called coffee breaks that track her courtship ("Act 1: They Meet").
But even after a quarter-century, Ms. Pac-Man has yet to reveal all her secrets.
From her surname's origins to her "Friends" cameo, here are seven trivia tidbits about the virtual world's most a-maze-ing lady:
1. The name "Pac" stems from "paku paku," which is Japanese slang for the motion of eating, kind of like "gobble, gobble" in English. The original 1979 game was called "Puck Man," which was wisely tweaked before its American launch.
2. Ms. Pac-Man's first maze features 220 dots, four power pellets, and four ghosts, named Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Sue. All of the ghosts also appeared in Pac-Man, except for Sue (she's the orange one), who replaced the original's Clyde.
3. Theoretically, there is no limit to the highest possible Ms. Pac-Man score. The current record belongs to Abdner Ashman of Queens, N.Y., who in April, 2006, hit 933,580. That's a lot of bananas, the most valuable bonus fruit, worth 5,000 points each.
4. A 2001 poll by Game Informer Magazine ranked Ms. Pac-Man the No. 9 video game of all time. Similarly, IGN.com in 2003 listed it at No. 13 and noted, "Let's not forget, Ms. Pac-Man was a pioneer for female video game characters of the future. You go, girl!"
5. Hardcore Ms. Pac-Man geeks have developed their own jargon, as explained on the site Pactionary.com. For example, "premature pac-ulation" occurs when players mistakenly think they've eaten a power pellet, only to turn around and die while trying to eat a ghost.
6. Ms. Pac-Man's likeness has graced dozens of products: clocks, clothing, dolls, games, housewares, jigsaw puzzles, makeup bags, plastic figurines, sneakers, toothbrushes, windup toys, plus (alongside Pac-Man) a highly collectable plastic lunchbox.
7. The video vixen has also appeared in films ("War Games," "Man on the Moon"), music (rapper Lil' Flip samples her sounds on his 2004 tune "Game Over"), and television "Futurama," "Scrubs"). An entire 2002 episode of "Friends" revolves around the pursuit of Ms. Pac-Man high scores. Also, check YouTube for several live-action re-creations.
Want to play? Current versions of Ms. Pac-Man are available for major game systems, in addition to the aforementioned iPod edition, and hipster bars across the country proudly tout their old-school consoles. (Traveler's tip: New York's LaGuardia Airport has an arcade unit inside security at Central Terminal, Concourse A.)
Propelled by her game's perennial appeal, and a touch of eighties nostalgia, Ms. Pac-Man is still trendy 25 years after her original heyday. And that's more than we can say for leg warmers.

Funny, I was partial to wombats until now ...

This just in, from The New Zealand Herald by way of Keith Olbermann:

Australia rocked by 'lesbian' koala revelation

Female koalas indulge in lesbian "sex sessions", rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time, according to researchers.
The furry, eucalyptus-eating creatures appear to develop this tendency for same-sex liaisons when they are in captivity. In the wild, they remain heterosexual.
Scientists monitoring the marsupials with digital cameras counted three homosexual interactions for every heterosexual one.
"Some females rejected the advances of males that were in their enclosures, only to become willing participants in homosexual encounters immediately after," say the researchers. ...
One theory put forward by the researchers is that the females do it to attract males; another is that it is simply hormonal, or that it is a stress reliever.

That's funny ... I think people think the same kind of stuff about human lesbians ....

P.S. I really did have a toy wombat I carried around with me in grade school. As if you need me to tell you that I was an odd kid.

No Rockstar for me ....

I've only been moderately tempted to try those crazy "energy drinks" the kids just love (not MY kids, but, you know, kids in general). Anyway, I won't be trying Rockstar brand, thanks to this heads-up from Defamer.com:

Homophobic dirtbag radio host Michael Savage (whose family owns Rockstar energy drink, FYI; adjust your caffeinated-battery-acid consumption habits accordingly) won't be seen around the CAA Death Star after all, as the recent signee to the agency is dumped after word got around about his "I don't like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke" comments re: Melissa Etheridge.