fashion and fame

Today I learned that the fashion industry expects men to wear floods and no socks (may resize your window). Other than that, I think I might emerge from my three-day tv coma here pretty soon and learn something other than that I think Kathy Griffin is funny. I mean, she has her own tv show, so surely some other people before me figured that out.

cartoon products, other news, and the latest reaction report

Today I got to watching a cartoon about the adventures of a mouse with a bad cold in a drugstore that carried magnetic flasks, electric needles, radium hairpins, kilowatt clocks, and saturated irium tweezers, so you know I had to figure out what irium was. It says on Wikipedia that irium is what Pepsodent, in a flash of marketing brilliance, decided to call sodium lauryl sulfate*. It might be something radioactive, too, but since I can't find any confirmation, I can only assume people are confusing it with iridium.

In other news:

• There are Stonehenges all over the country. They're just made out of cars and foam and such.
• People in jail flush sheets and clothing down the toilets for entertainment value.
• The moon is going to look extra huge this weekend.

I also learned that some products made of perfectly good organic cotton cloth come with absolutely evil tags sewn into them. I cut them off, so the stuff I ordered might be ok now, but holy s***.


* Just because that Tom's of Maine page considers sodium lauryl sulfate safe enough to use doesn't mean it couldn't kill you anyway.

'death aisle' products and the Weinermobile

Herbicides'll kill your kids and pets! Ok, so the article didn't actually say 'kill,' but in your face, Roundup.

In other product news, the local paper reported that the Weinermobile got pulled over because its plate ("YUMMY") was listed as stolen. Do we have entertaining news around here or what?

broken children and a nutball

Today I learned that 7% of kids are broken these days as opposed to just 2% in 1960. I blame chemicals, but then again, I do that a lot.

In other news, Quackwatch, the anti-alternative medicine site, takes people to court for saying bad things about its founder, but according to this article and several courts, the bad things were all true. I can only assume that information is correct because heaven knows the Quackwatch guy would sue the pants off the lady who wrote it if it wasn't, so I suppose he's going to have to watch himself instead of everybody else.

tent construction and pets

Today I learned that the trick to sewing seams in rip-stop nylon is to use six zillion pins per inch. Then, when you have systematically emptied your pin box by pinning seams and then throwing all the pins on the floor* one by one while sewing the seam, you can use those old-fashioned metal refrigerator magnets with the hook on them (a convenient handle) to pick up all the pins. I recognize that the fabric store people would be happy to sell me a magnetic pin box or some such thing, but so far, this is the only use I've found for those magnets I picked up at the hardware store. Oh, yeah, and I made an impulse purchase in a hardware store, where I learned a new term for the pesticide department from the clerk, who referred to it as "the death aisle."

In other news, scientists have proven that dogs think about stuff. I'm pleased they got around to figuring out how to prove it, and I sincerely hope someone is working on proof that your cats really are just messing with you.


* I actually put the pins on the table, but they spend most of their time on the floor. It could have something to do with the fact that all my tables are patio furniture.

some quotes and things that still make me sick

From the Ft. Smith, AR, KOA reservation page:

Tent, No hookups
These sites are our tenters' favorites, nestled in the trees in an eddy. Come give nature a hug. Wifi available.

In other quotes, we have a tv listing for a Voyager episode:

Episode: Future's End
Description: The Voyager crew time-travels to 1996 Los Angeles to help prevent an event that could alter the future; guest Ed Begley Jr. (Part 1 of 2, TV-PG, CC, Stereo, Rerun)

So join us in the future, visiting the used-to-be present, with Ed Begley Jr.

In other news, I ferried somebody to the airport today to rent a car, and the airport doesn't seem as bad as it used to. A couple of the people who came into the car rental building reeked beyond all expectation, but the actual rental car (from Alamo) smelled pretty decent.

Then I figured that since I hadn't done too badly at the airport, I should go to the library on the way home. When I got into the stacks, I found that my right eye wouldn't focus anymore. Given that then it was hard to read anything, I went home empty-handed.

went partying again

Today I learned that if you want ketchup without sugar, you can just make it yourself, and based on all my other recipes, I bet half the ingredients at that link are also unnecessary.

I probably learned some other things today, but it's late and I forgot them already.

bike paths and plastic wrap

From an article about attempting to connect all the bike paths in and around Chicago, we have the quote of the day regarding initial opposition to the construction of one stretch:

"[People worried] that gangs from Joliet were going to get on their bikes, rape and pillage in New Lenox, then ride back to Joliet with a big-screen TV on the back of their bike," he said.

In other news, today I asked a meat counter clerk at a store where I don't buy meat because it's wrapped in plastic what kind of plastic they use. (I have a bad habit of asking hapless clerks obscure questions. I can't help it.) She didn't know what it was but allowed me behind the counter to sniff it, and it turned out to be very informative. So informative that I wish I had come up with my obscure question at home near my internet connection instead of inhaling PVC fumes.

a death-defying stunt, an engine innovation, and Crocs

Today I learned that

⇒ I can go in Target. ⇐

I'm not going to do it a lot, but it's still a useful ability.

In other news, you can increase the gas mileage of a conventional combustion engine by using the heat it generates to power a steam engine. Also, I'm not much of one to defend President Bush's policies, but I will defend to the death his right to wear Crocs over to his bike before he puts on his bike shoes. I don't know what the fashion police wear walking over to their bikes when they're on bike patrol, but I hope it's uncomfortable.

exciting morning

Today I learned that even though some brands of acrylic sheet pass the sniff test, some don't. That unfortunately became apparent only after the box we made to contain the tv stink had sat in the living room for 18 hours. In unrelated news, you should never park a particle board shelf you just took out of your garage in the sun near the intake for the house pressurizer.

all about air quality

Today I learned that if you spend all morning cleaning the heck out of the inside of your elderly BMW and then take it to the car wash so they can smear nasty-smelling goop all over it to make it all shiny, the first thing they ask is if you want the interior cleaned because you didn't smear the inside with nasty-smelling goop, i.e., Armor All®.

Then, since we were out, we learned that all the cheap shoes you'd get if you were a guy who wanted to run out to the garage without tying any laces smell like the tv, which is now residing in the living room, but under a box made of acrylic sheet and clear caulk.

And the reason you'd need shoes to get to the garage is that we designed the easiest airlock ever between the kitchen and the garage. The way it works is that we taped the door shut on both sides, so if you want to get from one side to the other, you have to run around through the front door. This system is working fine except for needing to carry a garage door opener in your pocket at all times.

the tv box

Today I learned that you can, indeed, make a box to contain your tv and its accompanying smells using acrylic sheet from the hardware store and clear caulk. The trick is wiping off the excess caulk before it dries in the desert air in June.

Other than that, I counted to find out that my nose has been running for about ten days straight, watched a bunch of Voyager reruns, broke my favorite drinking glass, and roasted a rotten chicken.

That's enough damage for one day.

stuff and autism

Yesterday I learned that foie gras will kill you and that the local Jehovah's Witnesses are going try over the next three weeks to tell every household in Southern Arizona personally about their yearly conference. I really must prepare something with which to entertain them, but I understand that if you're too entertaining, they come back.

Then I came across an article by a doctor who was treating a kid with Asperger's whose mom was convinced that her son's condition was mercury-related. The doctor reported that the kid had made no improvement on his mom's treatment plan, so clearly, from his point of view, people who are worried about mercury toxicity are deluded. I had a lot of thoughts about this, but I was pretty wiped out last night, so you didn't get to hear about it yesterday.

Then today I read an article that indicates people divide into two camps on autism: those who think kids are born with it so they need therapy, and those who believe mercury causes it so they need chelation. So now I can't keep my mouth shut, despite the fact that I had a couple of nasty exposures today so I am, to put it succinctly, kind of a moron tonight.

Anyway, the mom and the doctor fall very neatly into those two categories, where the mom thinks autism is mercury related, and the doctor thinks she's a nutball and it isn't.

And maybe in this kid's case it wasn't. Maybe this kid inhaled a bunch of formaldehyde crawling around on new carpet or couldn't handle all the stuff that passes for food in this culture. With a bunch of parents screaming about mercury toxicity, the medical community is not going to spend any time trying to figure out what mold or pesticides or formaldehyde do to developing brains, and toddlers aren't going to point and say, Mother, I react to the synthetic fragrance in that stuff you smear on my behind, or these carpet chemicals down here. They just cry and are unmanageable and antisocial.

Which sounds just like me when I first got sick, but I at least had developed social skills first. And learned to talk, and reason, and then go find the doctor who could help me. I mean, if my mom had had to diagnose me, it very likely would not have gone nearly this well, and I couldn't possibly have blamed her for it.

So it is my contention that autism may be caused by mercury, but it may also be caused by a host of other chemicals that lots of people tolerate fine, but some of us don't, and the sooner the doctors and parents of autistic kids stop arguing about nature vs. nurture and get the chemicals away from and out of the kids, the better.

studs and regained abilities

Today I learned that metal studs are the coolest construction product ever, but only after you wipe the who-knows-what off them with alcohol. They're much quieter to cut than conventional studs because you cut them with tin snips, but the downside is that if you drop one, it makes an unholy racket. Also you have to worry about cutting yourself on the sharp edges when you wipe them down, but I understand that if you have a lot of them, you can take them to the car wash and hose them down with TSP, thereby destroying the environment, but fixing it so you can build a house that won't grow mold or feed termites.

In other news, I felt fine this morning. I'm just reporting that because yesterday I went in a giant home improvement store and then essentially ate corn chips for dinner, either one of which would have ruined me six months ago. This getting better thing is pretty entertaining.

the continuing laundry machine saga

Yesterday I fussed that the person who turned the washing machine faucet around to face the garage instead of the kitchen closet was an idiot. Today I learned that they also left a huge, gaping hole behind the dryer, where I missed it before, so it's no wonder parking the car in the garage made me sick.

Having patched all the holes, I'm much more optimistic that we'll be able to park the car in the garage pretty soon.

Learning some of that required a trip to Lowe's, so that's about all I learned, other than that the air in Lowe's seems almost better to me than the air in Safeway did six months ago, so check me out, all shopping in the Lowe's.

how to get a cow out of a pool

Today I learned that it's about time to retire the drinking-age BMW and that the laundry closet in my kitchen is much more tolerable if you get all the shelf supports out of it. Also, the idiot who turned around the plumbing in there so they could put the washing machine in the garage instead of the kitchen closet used Christmas wrapping to fake up the box in the garage.

In other news, the mold from the storm on Monday is letting up, so I was able to go outside without getting sick for a little while today. Even better, I slept through the night, and in the bed, too.

And in case you needed to know, here's how you get a cow out of a swimming pool (video).

bananas, "food," and reasoned arguments

Today I learned that there are people out there who believe refrigerated bananas are toxic. In case anybody who's been to that link still has any doubts, I'll tell you about the woman I know who has so many food sensitivities that she practically survives on bananas. Actually, she's sick enough that I mostly know her husband, who is pretty much permanently in need of more bananas. She can taste it if you touch the banana's outside where the store chemicals are and then touch the part you eat. She can taste it if you mix a banana with a minor bruise into banana bread made with rye flour and peanut butter, so this is major princess-and-the-pea stuff, and she is fine with refrigerated bananas in the banana bread.

In other food news, Kellogg's has passed an internal rule that it won't market unhealthy foods to kids under 12. Tony the tiger food, better known as frosted flakes, qualifies as health food under their guidelines.

In other stupid news, that article I pointed to yesterday about the state legislature trying to repeal the rule about mandatory interlocks for first-time DUI offenders attracted somebody who uses actual logical arguments, and wow, was that different than what usually appears on the comment boards of the local paper. I know I need to get out more (or I wouldn't be reading that stuff in the first place), but that was pretty entertaining. Kind of obnoxious and condescending on occasion, but really entertaining.

iodine and elected officials

Today I learned all about iodine. It all depends on who you ask how much you are supposed to get and how much over that constitutes an overdose. Apparently there is iodine in seafood (way to be specific) (ok, the salmon people are specific), but if you get farmed fish, you're on your own. Dairy products have iodine in them because of what they feed cows and the cleaning solutions used on dairy farms, but I have no idea how eggs get iodine in them unless people have started milking chickens.*

The upshot is that if I don't want to worry about using non-iodized salt, I should throw some iodized salt in my diet on the days I'm not sure I'm getting enough from my food, or maybe find some kelp.

In other news, the state legislature passed a law requiring first-time drunk drivers to get interlocks installed in their cars. Now our elected officials are having second thoughts, which leads us to the quote of the day:

Rep. Olivia Cajero Bedford, D-Tucson, said the law discriminates against women because they generally weigh less than men - meaning they can't drink as much before hitting the legal limit.

"With all due respect, you guys have more fat than I do," she said.

To be fair, another representative called her on it, but I think we ought to get an interlock installed on her car right now.


* Not too long into my 28 years and counting of dairy sensitivity, I stopped being surprised when people assumed that eggs were dairy products. People should know better. I mean, horseradish is in the dairy case at the grocery store, but people don't think that comes from cows. Well, that I know of.

all about the north end of my kitchen

Today we fiddled with the house pressurizer and the nearby closet that currently houses the dryer and has room for the washing machine. Thus we learned that:

• The shelf supports we left in the closet when we took out some shelves are leaking formaldehyde something fierce.
• I've developed a sensitivity to redwood, so we had to wrap the box under the house pressurizer with Tu Tuff.
• The pressurizer box looks all color coordinated with the new door to the dryer closet.

• This is key: the plastic across the dryer closet opening is blown tight because we failed to account for the fact that dryer vents are never actually closed: air goes in the back of the machine, into the drum, down through the lint trap, and out into the great outdoors.
• Once we sealed off the dryer closet, besides not having trouble with formaldehyde anymore, when we turned on the house pressurizer, it made my ears pop.

All we need to do now is take care of the formaldehyde-y wall parts and build fairly airtight boxes for the dryer and washer, which will then be allowed inside. Then we can continue our attempts to park the car in the attached garage without gassing anybody, and stay tuned because this kind of thing is likely to involve an airlock, and I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Also, researchers have extended the five-second rule to 30 or 60 seconds, depending on the goopiness of the food you dropped, but they only measured bacteria levels, not disinfectant chemicals, so yuck anyway.

gas hydrate and the house pressurizer

Today I learned of the existence of gas hydrate, for all the good it's ever going to do anybody, and that we need to reseal or rebuild the box under the house pressurizer because it's making me sick. Since we can't run the pressurizer, something's getting into the house and I feel like I have a cold, but I know it's not a cold because it goes away when I get into good air.

Wow, this was a lousy post.

Paris Hilton and Coinstar

Today I learned that Paris Hilton might have some psychiatric condition where she'd need to take some medication that she failed to take with her to jail because she didn't want anybody to know about it, but I forgot where I read it. See, that would explain the terminal weirdness at the jail, but she could just be a dog. I've met people whose dogs won't eat unless their people are around, and these people don't go on vacation unless they can take the dog.

Since you all know I love to blame everything on chemicals, I have one more potential explanation: Paris has poisoned herself with all the chemicals in her three kinds of perfume, the pthalates in her 'products,' and whatever she's ingested partying, so all she was doing in a jail under a freeway and next to a train track was reacting to exhaust fumes. That would explain things like being too cold, not sleeping, and not eating. Then, after three days of that, she'd still be getting rid of it today, which would explain the crying, not eating, and not sleeping she's doing in the medical ward.

Unfortunately, I think her biggest problem is really a bad case of arrogance, and I understand the withdrawal symptoms of that are probably crying, not eating, and not sleeping.

In totally plebeian news, today I converted $154 in change into an Amazon gift card using the Coinstar machine at the local Basha's. I was a little nervous that I would screw it up and accidentally give Coinstar 8% of my change, but everything went just as I'd planned it, including the part where I had enough change to purchase everything I'd already put in my Amazon cart. Not that this bought much, but I had 903 pennies.

And while I'm at it here, I will note that I didn't get sick in the Basha's, but I carefully avoided standing in any of the checkout lines. I mean, I'm not an idiot.

finished my tent-math homework

Today I learned that the house pressurization system isn't handling something in the afternoons, so tomorrow we're going to try turning it to recirculate at noon. Just so you know.

The only other thing I learned was you can get through those security bars people put on their windows, but the guy I read about did it by being ejected from an SUV that flipped while fleeing from a burglary. I don't think that's a very good way to do it.

cereal and tents

Houston, we have achieved breakfast cereal.

It's the kind that comes in a plastic bag and has exactly one ingredient: puffed rice. With the addition of rice milk, which did have an oil added to it, it exceeded all expectations. One of my friends had told me it was good, but sometimes we aren't that picky, and besides, my only experience with puffed rice was rice cakes, which people tend to compare to styrofoam. This was nothing like styrofoam.

Also, from a single attempt to drink from a styrofoam cup during this illness I learned that styrofoam is so evil that not even rice cakes deserve the comparison, so we should really think up something else to compare them to.

In other news, we started designing a three-pole dome tent. Instead of measuring an existing tent or anything sensible, we bought three poles last year and are building the tent to fit the poles. So far we've approximated the pole shape with a parabola and remembered how to do a line integral so we can relate a z-coordinate to a distance from the center of the tent. Then we can do that for the centers of the sides as well and figure out what shape a tent side should be. However, preliminary studies indicate that the closer you put the ends of a pole, the less parabolic it is, so it occurred to us that we could model the poles by figuring out how much force a little piece of the pole exerts on the next little piece of the pole and integrating that to get the exact shape. I got stalled before that happened because I figured as long as I'd had rice milk, I could have some fake ice cream made by the same company, but it has a few more ingredients and comes in a cardboard package, so you frequent readers can guess how that went.

Ok, so it's pretty obvious that if we just build the top part of the tent using the parabolas we've calculated and leave extra fabric at the bottom, we can just sew the bottom of the tent onto the top so it'll fit the poles. That would save us some calculus, but then we wouldn't get the entertainment factor from waking up brain cells we'd forgotten about.

I knew we were nerds before, but this is like finding out you have a third arm, and it's good for stuff.

not much to report

I had a little too much fun yesterday, plus there was something wrong with the fish we had for dinner last night, so today about all I learned was that somebody bought Biosphere 2 and wants to build 1500 houses on the land and that the LA Times' predecessor printed a story in 1957 about a dalmatian being hypnotized by an actor playing a hypnotist on tv.

vapor lock and shoes

Today I learned about vapor lock, where, for example, the gas in your friend's pickup vaporizes where it's not supposed to and the truck stalls. The cure for this is to prop the hood open and wait around for about ten minutes for the engine to cool down, then start the truck and idle it with your foot on the gas for a few minutes.

Fortunately I learned this near a really big shoe store, so I had the opportunity to kill ten minutes learning that Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals:

1. are called exercise sandals
2. are very inexpensive in orange
3. are vanity sized like bridesmaid dresses.

I suppose that last one could just mean that Dr. Scholl thinks I have funny-shaped feet, but I don't care.

the neighbors

The only problem with nesting in a non-native vine in the desert is that the local house-apes feel compelled to come out and take your kids' picture when they fledge.

a clean phone, disposals, racists, and snack food

Today I learned that the trick to washing your spouse's cell phone really is to make sure it doesn't get into the dryer. For those of you keeping track, that's the third time I've washed his phone, and the only time we had to replace one was when the first one ended up in the dryer. I'm going to work really, really hard to not try that with this second one.

In newspaper news:

• NBC got sued in October for showing the cheerleader on Heroes getting her hand shredded in an InSinkErator garbage disposal. Apparently the manufacturer is worried that people will think sticking your hand in a garbage disposal is dangerous.
• Leonard Pitts wrote a column about lunatic white supremacists complaining that the national media fails to report on black-on-white crime, citing the lack of non-local coverage of the gruesome murder of two white people by five black people in Tennessee. Mr. Pitts pointed out that the national media had hardly fallen down on that job in other cases, and Arizona Daily Star commenters concluded that Mr. Pitts is a horrible racist. So, Arizona - ya gotta love it.
• Pet owners in areas where the cicadas are out are saving a bunch of money on pet food.

At last but not least, whatever I was getting rid of that smelled like rotting garbage is gone, so thank goodness.

eggs

Today I learned something about how long kiwis sit on nests and that one of them faked out all the conservationists who'd hoped they'd get to see a baby kiwi.

That's all I got today, so have a picture of a partially-broken-into ostrich egg from February:


Actually, there was one more thing. Today I smell like rotting garbage, and I hope it goes away soon.

terra preta, smart birds, big nerds, deadly chicks, and a book

Today I learned that if you heat up plant material in an anaerobic environment, you can stir the result into lousy soil and your crops do as well or better than if you just added nitrogen, and you don't have to do it every year. It also sequesters carbon. The article I read about it only said that the company helping with the trials hasn't been able to make very much yet, but it didn't ask if any of this sounded familiar. Apparently between the time I was in school learning about the mystery of terra preta and now, scientists figured it out, and people used to do it in the fields, and I bet they didn't call their smoldering mounds of dead plant parts 'pyrolysis plants.'

In other news:

• Birds have discovered that cigarette smoke acts as a pesticide.
• A Slingbox is a device that lets you watch stuff you recorded from tv at home over the internet from someplace else, but you have to buy their proprietary software for your computer and a Slingbox. I think this would be more interesting to me, personally, if I hadn't already been doing that for a couple of years. (Obviously my Unix skills aren't up to that yet; I'm a nerd, but I married a bigger one.)
• Petting zoos'll kill you.

It also appears that Fahrenheit 451 doesn't mean what we think it means, but it's going to be hard for some of us to find out for sure because my local library doesn't have it. Ok, so there are about fifteen local libraries here in town, and several of them have multiple copies, but still.

dryer fumes, goofy names, and the sweet potato farm

Today I learned that if you completely disassemble your dryer and get all the lint and dust out of the case, when you put it back together again, it's quieter. Also, I stopped reacting to it. Apparently, filtering car fumes with the insides of the garage wall isn't a good way to supply air to your dryer. Who knew?

In other news, the Arizona Republic site, which I previously only used for stupid news, has a whole page devoted to weird places to visit in Arizona, plus a bonus section of where all the weirdo town names came from.

In sweet potato news, you may remember that I sprouted one, pulled the sprouts off, and put them in water to grow roots. The other day when I took them out and planted them, I learned that the smaller they are, the sooner they resemble wilted salad. Some of the taller ones look like they might make it.