Dave Brown

Evil propaganda!

Well, I heard something about a bit of controversy in the United States involving President Obama, the democratically-elected leader of the country, addressing the nation’s children.

I figured that was a perfectly harmless thing for the President (you know, the democratically-elected one) to do. He’d probably say things like “stay in school” and “don’t get in trouble”, possibly with a soupçon of “support your folks in these tough times”.

So I hit the Google, and entered “Obama children”.

This yielded absolutely nothing for me but right-wing nutcases blasting on about how Obama is going to brainwash the Children Of The Nation with Socialist Propaganda, despite the fact that the guy is way further right than most countries’ conservatives.

But here’s the thing: remember what George Bush was doing while the planes were hitting the World Trade Center? He was talking to schoolchildren! I don’t remember any great fuss about him brainwashing the children then. I do remember that there was fuss about how he let the show go on rather than immediately leap into action (and do what?).

I guess when a far-right-wing idiot indoctrinates schoolchildren (Bush was reading My Pet Goat. Horrors!), it’s perfectly okay: Ronald Reagan went on TV to talk to schoolchildren in 1988 about how wonderful tax cuts were with nary a burble of controversy. But when the other team does it, it’s obviously the epitome of evil and must be stopped at all costs.

Then again, this is the same bunch of idiots who believe that taking care of the sick is a horrible horrible idea that must be stopped.

Apparently I missed this

Peter Watts arrives late to the party.

I get spam

“Do you want to know the secret of picking up women? It’s as simple as having a big instrument hanging between your legs.”

This man must be a smash hit with the ladies.

Music that makes my heart go ba-dump

I listen to a pretty varied selection of music.

Giving tribute to my Canadian roots, I present to you, Mylène Farmer’s “Comme J’ai Mal”.

Irohazaka

You see this guy?

Well, last night I went down that same road (it’s actually featured in Initial D).

On a motorcycle.

At night.

In pouring rain.

With fog.

Yeah, I was going slower than the guy in the car.

Probably uninteresting crap

When I was over in Kurayoshi recently, I noticed that Dephanie, an American, was furnished with a Japanese car, but at no point did it make her enter a password, adjust the oil pressure level manually, or any of those other things that I assume Japanese people have to do before they allow themselves to proceed when the light turns green.

Ah well. On the way home tonight, I narrowly-avoided killing an idiot on a toy scooter who had decided that Every Time Possible was the Right Time to Take Initiative and go bombing through traffic as if he were invulnerable. He swerved right in front of me without even so much as glancing in his mirrors, because someone else was fool enough to turn left where he was going: rather than simply waiting for the guy to get out of the way, he had to go lurching over into the other lane of traffic, regardless of whether there was anyone there. I wonder how he managed to survive this long.

On masculine vs. feminine grooming

I don’t get why girls think that using an epilator is somehow a test of feminine manliness. Plucking out nose hairs is way, way more painful.

An epilator is basically a set of motorized tweezers that yanks hairs out by the roots. If you’re a normal female, you have about 17 hairs on your legs, and removing them by any means—including the mechanized hair-puller machine—takes about 17 seconds. If you’re a normal female, you think that these 17 hairs makes you really hairy and therefore disgusting to look at.

Since men tend to be hairy in general, they also tend to grow copious quantities of hair in absurd places. Like, say, the insides of their nostrils. And their earholes.

Since I prefer not to look like a complete scarecrow, with bits of straw sticking out of every orifice, I like to clean those stray hairs out. So ouch. Ouch ouch. Plucking nose hairs makes me really sneezy, for pretty obvious reasons.

Blasting off your (say, to pick a famously sensitive spot) pubic hair with an epilator is, by comparison, a relatively painless exercise.

Severely-delayed music review

Chage and Aska’s 1992 album “Guys” is one of the most beautifully-produced records ever made.

They had an excess of budget following the astonishing success of their 1991 smash hit “Tree”, and they made excellent use of it. It was inevitable that the follow-up to “Tree” would be less well-regarded, and they essentially ignored all of that and made one of their best-sounding albums ever.

My ADSL is very A today

I wonder if they’ve been doing upgrades recently. I only signed up for 45Mbit/s down.

Usually I get much better upload speeds though.

Vaguely related to yesterday's helmet folly

Today over lunchtime, I saw a guy who was riding his bicycle no-hands. Which was okay, because it was a fixie with no brakes so even if he did need to stop in an emergency, he wouldn’t be able to.

Not having his hands on the handlebars freed them to do other tasks, which might explain why he was talking on the phone.