To celebrate, please have Zooey bathed and brought to my tent. <smirk>

Really, though, to celebrate, I’m going to rest for the remainder of the day, and see if I can shake this edge of a headache I’ve been having for the last day or two (which I’ve been trying to treat with bike riding so I could get past my arbitrary round number goal for the last couple of days), then keep riding some more each day as I can, because honestly, it’s become a habit now.

So, once again yay for me, who’s managed to meet an arbitrary goal, and hopefully improve my cardiovascular health a bit.

1. “In Step” – Girl Talk
2. “Any Way You Want It” – Glee cast
3. “Heavy Metal” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
4. “Crossfire” – Kasey Chambers
5. “Anwsering Machine” – The Replacements
6. “Dragonforce” – Body Breakdown
7. “Rocket Queen” – Guns ‘N Roses
8. “Shoot Me Like A Prayer” – Rock Sugar
9. “Please Let That Be You” – The Rentals
10. “Hawthorne” – that dog.
11. “Chasin’ Girls” – The Clarks

…Because the most horrific consequence imaginable of underfunded public education would be that kids start reading comic books.

I’m really tired of people perpetuating insulting myths about my hobbies, especially when those people are Democratic political candidates like Nancy King (running for the MD state senate), whose positions I tend to agree with, especially on education funding (there’s no better investment in the future of a nation than making sure that the population is educated and informed).

I honestly thought that the “comics = degenerate” meme went out with the Comics Code Authority. Apparently not.

I’ll be curious to see how this particular race plays out; Diamond, the huge comics distributor, is based on MD, and King’s primary opponent has already responded to the ad, on the Bendis boards, a forum frequented by numerous comics professionals.

Back to the original idea though – how can kids reading be construed as a bad thing? Candidate King clearly hasn’t thought her cunning plan all the way through.

Otherwise, the weather was a bit cooler, and it made my bike rides very pleasant.

Family camping this weekend…hope it doesn’t rain.

1. “You Never Give Me Your Money” – The Beatles
2. “Pressure” – Paramore
3. “True Romantic (acoustic)” – Indigo Girls
4. “Moondance” – Nightwish
5. “Accelerate” – REM
6. “He Wasn’t” – Avril Lavigne
7. “Space Doggity” – Jonathan Coulton
8. “The Sun and the Rain” – Madness
9. “Pardon Me” – Weezer
10. “I’m A Fool” – The Clarks

It’s kind of funny how synergy works. Just the other week I was musing about “princesses” and the problems they can present, and now, the always reliable JoCo releases a new song addressing the same general topic.

The words of Coulton himself:

I wrote a song called “The Princess Who Saved Herself” because my daughter is obsessed with princesses, so I am forced to think and talk about them a lot. None of them really kick ass as much as I hope my daughter kicks ass when she’s all grown up, so I made up one that does…

It also happens that this song was inadvertently written directly to another specific demographic: my eldest daughter, who has pretty much decided that this is her new favorite tune (at least until something else comes along).

Yeah, we need more of this kind of thing.

Incidentally, the song was released on Many Hands, a charity compilation CD benefiting Haitian earthquake relief, with a bunch of other kids’ tunes. And even if the other tracks are (in my kids’ humble opinion) not necessarily as strong as this one, the project supports a worthy cause, and if nothing else, served as the basis for some “teaching moment” conversations ’round here when we popped the disc in.

quests charged already entrusted
elsewhere.

initiative quashed, despondence formented.

what is worst is that
no one notices.

Thirty-six, besides being a prime number*, isn’t much of a milestone. It’s six time six, no big deal.

Next year might be fun, since I get to pick between two entirely different pop culture references to mark the occasion. But, that’s ages away.

Whatever, happy birthday to me.

____________

* – thirty-six, is of course, not a prime number. I’m getting ahead of myself again.

In the meantime, here’s some music:

1. “Big Bad World One (live)” – Jonathan Coulton
2. “Downtown” – Tegan & Sara
3. “Lover” – Les Paul & Mary Ford
4. “Better” – Helmet
5. “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) – REM
6. “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me” – The Pipettes
7. “A Crippling Blow” – The Killers
8. “Lullaby” – The Cure
9. “No Cars Go” – Arcade Fire
10. “Watermelon in Easter Hay” – Frank Zappa

This is what I encountered about 3 miles into my trail ride yesterday afternoon (and then again about 8 miles in, because it’s a five mile loop)…a very large tree fallen over the path, pretty much right after a blind turn. For a sense of scale, that wall of foliage is around twelve feet high.

Of course, if life presents an obstacle, you find a way around it. My way was a nice wide detour through the thick underbrush in the wood, carrying the bike (those woods have big thorns which have destroyed one tire tube already) and coming around on the other side.

Pretty picture? Yep. Metaphor for life? Meh.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

It’s kind of a shame that something that’s taken for granted today was considered an unnatural abomination that would bring forth the downfall of American society less than a century ago.

However, it’s also a reminder that time is on the side of progress, and that today’s big social controversies will be settled on the side of the expansion of rights, and that people a hundred years from now will look back at us with amused wonder and bafflement.