Flametoad

Very early in my marriage, my wife and I read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Laugh if you want, but it got us through that first year. One of the take-away messages was that you can’t dictate your partner’s feelings. No matter how irrational or misapplied, you just can’t tell your loved one “You shouldn’t feel neglected/offended/angry/sad/whatever. You should actually feel ‘X’ because I’m actually doing/not-doing ‘Y’.” It doesn’t work like that. People feel the way they feel, rightly or wrongly. At best, you can help them work through their negative emotion and come out the other side. You don’t do that by telling them how they’re supposed to feel, you do it by guiding them to a resolution. Or, other times, the best thing to do is leave them alone and let them work it out on their own.

I’m reminded of this as I see discussions about the “mosque” near Ground Zero. Whether community center or religious shrine, it has the right to be there. It’s as simple as that. Our constitution protects us all equally and I’d have it no other way. However, I’m alarmed by the people who frame the protest strictly in terms of religious intolerance, ignorance, or bigotry. I realize that the media thrives on controversy and a certain amount of this frenzy has been whipped up to sell air time or ad space. I’m sure politicians love it because it deflects, for however briefly, the real injustice in how partisan politics is tearing this country apart. However, don’t forget that some–maybe many–people are genuinely hurt and deeply offended by the presence of this center. I find it grossly insensitive when I see people write “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way.” Try saying that to your significant other the next time you have a disagreement and see how well that goes over. That one sentence marginalizes one’s feelings in a way that would lead a couple to divorce. No wonder this country is so divided! Rather than berating people for feeling hurt or betrayed, maybe we need to help one another deal with the anger and hurt that still hasn’t healed. Maybe we need to accept that for some, it is simply too soon.

Even though this isn’t really Bruce Lee (it’s apparently part of a Nokia commercial), it’s still a neat video.

I became aware of Bruce Lee when I was in junior high, which is probably when a lot of boys realize that karate is really cool. My best friend, my cousin, and I would buy and devour martial arts magazines featuring articles on Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. I have a lot of fond memories of hanging out with my friends and watching Bruce Lee movies.

Oh great! As if solar flares weren’t enough, apparently scientists have discovered “space quakes“.

Every day we learn something new about how this planet works. It’s a good thing those discoveries lead to new technological breakthroughs.

Like practically everyone else in the civilized world, I have a number of cherished photos from “pre-digital” days. I’ve long wanted to scan them in to share and preserve, but my cheap nature has kept me from dropping >$100 on a new scanner that I would use infrequently. However, this week I solved that problem when I plunked down my hard-earned $25 on a used scanner I found on Craig’s List. This post is a test of a plugin that pulls images from my Flikr account to display here. I’ve had the plugin for a long time, but I haven’t used it in ages. This is a random assortment of photos I pulled from an old album to test on my scanner. The one thing I don’t like about this plugin is that it doesn’t pull the captions for the photos. Some of these really need context. The plugin author claims it’ll be coming in a future release.

Look for a series of photoblog posts covering a trip to Europe in 1990. It’ll be legendary! Or something.

That’s the random question of the day.

After Leia was captured at the beginning of New Hope and brought before Vader, she said “Vader. I should have recognized your foul stench as soon as I was brought on board.” (Really, Lucas? You’ve got to give props to Carrie Fisher for delivering that line with a straight face.)

My assumption was that she was just being insulting. However, in light of seeing how badly Anakin was burned in episode III, it struck me out of the blue today that maybe  Vader really does have a distinctive odor. That would have been a really interesting aspect of the character. It puts a whole new spin on the Robot Chicken parody though.

“Oh, wait, you were flying around for two weeks trying to get a signal! Gosh, you must smell like feet wrapped in burnt bacon!”