Musing on…The Mind’s Mish-Mash

Warning: the following entry has no point at all. It’s just stuff that’s crossing my mind.

Rosario Dawson — She always makes me smile. Maybe it’s because she reminds me so much of one of my dearest friends, with whom she not only has a passing resemblance, but also…

.Klingons. Honestly, if you’re a life-long geek, how can you not like a woman who likes Klingons?

Empathy bellies — I saw an add for Morgan Spurlock’s show 30 Days where the docu-reality-guy appears preggers, meaning he’s clad in an empathy belly. For those who don’t know, an empathy belly is a contraption a person wears to simulate what it feels to be 8-ish months pregnant. It’s used to help men and teen girls understand that being pregnant isn’t all tea and cookies.

Anyway, whenever I see an empathy belly, I just cringe. A lot of talk-show hosts (almost always male) would don them for a period of time to try to demonstrate that pregnancy wasn’t so hard, and they all ended up quivering sweaty masses. Whatever. What gets my goat is that no one ever mentions the effect of SUDDENLY becoming eight-months pregnant. I mean, put on any ol’ thirty-three pound weighted vest and see how long you last.

No, the real test would be to add weight in increments over a long period of time (say eight-to-nine months). Touting the empathy belly as a simulator is disingenuous. It isn’t. It’s a stunt device meant to humble men and scare teen girls. I’m not saying that either or both of those aims isn’t laudable, but it’s not how the device is being marketed.

Toasters — Here’s a challenge: try to find a new toaster available now under $70US, with a mostly chrome/stainless body, no controls except for the lever and a darkness knob(s), and toasts evenly in under three minutes. Really. Try it. It’s fun.

Middle East — Let’s just put a fence around the whole area and let everyone duke it out, no holds barred. No one outside gets to interfere. Whoever wins, wins, and that’s the end of it…because frankly, I’m sick of this constant state of not resolving anything. It’s been around all my life (more than four decades). I might write more on this later in its own blog entry, but the gist is pretty much: just figure out a way to get along…either by talking or by fighting, but just do it and get it over with forever.

Good on yer, bro — My dad is mired in one of those capability-reducing brain diseases. At this point, he’s mostly seen after by my mom and me. My brother took a day off of work and spent time with my dad for an extended period…the first time in a while. My dad appreciated spending the time with his younger son so much that he got all verklempt. That’s good, and good for my brother. Every little bit of sunshine helps.

MS Stylin’ — I have to say that I hate that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t do style sheets at all well. As I put together templates for web sites, I just have headache after headache having to deal with the not-quite-as-compliant-as-I’d-hope way that IE displays styles. I’m constantly having to kludge around its shortcomings. Oh, and while I’m at it, a big raspberry to the CSS standards committee for not having an easy way of getting all the columns in a liquid container to be the same height (to most of you, that was totally Greek, but you other designers know my pain).