Abigail Alani Gatsch

Abigail Alani Gatsch
Originally uploaded by plucky punk.

The Plucky Baby. Awwww...

Everyone involved is getting settled. I've discovered the priorities with a newborn in the house kind of go like this:

1. Attend to baby's every need.

2. Sleep

3. All the other crap you meant to do.

So I will be blogging more later.

Happy Birthday Abbie!

Pictures and story to follow as soon as we get home from hospital.

Okay. So this is it.

These are my last few hours as a childless woman. I'm on my way to be induced.

Weird.

If anyone reading this is friends or family looking for me, I'll be at this hospital, and am not above begging for gifts.

Cheers, it's been nice knowing you,

Childless Vanessa.

Soon-to-be-known-as Mommy.

Good News Everyone!

Comedy Central is going to put Futurama back on the air!

Three years after the show last aired on prime time, the cable net has signed a deal to resurrect the former Fox animated series for a minimum 13-episode run.

Comedy Central will start airing the new shows in 2008.

"We are thrilled that Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox Television have decided to produce new episodes of Futurama and that Comedy Central will be the first to air them," said David Bernath, the cable net's senior VP.

The new episode order is part of a larger deal Comedy Central made with the production company last year, when they bought the syndicated rights to Futurama's 72-episode library.

Any show where Al Gore's head shouts "Peace out y'all!" before rocket-launching to Jupiter is fine by me.

In other news, I am now scheduled to be induced on Monday. I feel a little like one of the characters from a Final Fantasy video game when a bad guy casts "Doom" on you and a number counts down above your head until you die.

And now, I feel like a massive geek.

Poor baby I'm having. She's got geeky parents.

Happy Birthday!

Aliza had her baby! Yay!

Hee.

Okay, this is funny.

Seriously. I laughed for like half an hour.

Via this thread at Pharyngula, which features an equally cringe-worthy clip of a drunken Connie Chung in a ballgown on a piano.

Things Happening Today

1. I am finally going to clean the damn fishtank. I am such a bad betta owner, I really should be ashamed. Poor Mr. Beaumont, king of fin rot.

2. Aliza seems to be in labor. Go cheer her on!

3. You should call your senators about the Net Neutrality bill if you like to read blogs at all. Because if your telephone company had their way, then non-corporate whore content might have a hard time making its way to you over the internet.

Read skippy's impassioned take on this issue. Several prominent blogs think nothing of accepting ad money from the dark side, apparently. This is more than shocking to me. You'd think liberal blogtopia (yes, skippy etc.,) would rally behind this issue.

Also, click on the thingy in the sidebar there that says Save the Internet. Tells you all you need to know.

Well, at least he's getting exercise...

Truly frightening kid goes apeshit on Dance Dance Revolution.

Via Daddy Types, who is going to Iceland and I am jealous.

Oh, for fuck's sake!

If I give everyone on the internet a thousand dollars, will my favorite blogs stop talking about blowjobs? Please?

Everyone hates Ann Coulter. Yay!!!!

I'm sure it says something about my emotional maturity, but it fills me with glee to see Ann Coulter being thrashed about in the media again recently.

Yes, all the arguments that she's just getting unneccesary attention for her hate-filled tirades apply. And I'm sure you're right. Just don't spoil my fun.

First off, there's her appearance on the Today Show. Ann, it's not smart to make like you sufferred on 9/11 just as much as the people of New York, while in New York.

It's a stupid thing to say anywhere, but you shouldn't say it to the faces of people who were standing in the streets watching bodies fall out of buildings in real-time, instead of through their television screens. They won't understand the subtle point you're trying to make.

PZ at Pharyngula has a nice takedown of some of her new book, Godless.

A reader (who will be nameless, unless he wants to confess in the comments) sent me a chunk of Coulter's book, Godless. It's worse than I feared. It contains the usual stock creationist crap presented at a rapid pace, full of the usual bald assertions of outright lies, intentional misinterpretations, and lots and lots of quote mining. Seriously, it looks like every paragraph contains multiple falsehoods or screwy manglings of science.

Not that I'm surprised. It must be so easy to be someone like Ann Coulter. All you have to do is make shit up, put it in book form, confuse footnotes with endnotes, and you're rich. You could work in the comfort of your own home!

In fact, I think I'm in the wrong business. Someone get me a blonde wig!

PZ also mentions why Coulter isn't better ignored.

Here's a counterargument: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I've watched good people do nothing about creeping lunacy and anti-intellectualism for decades. I watched appalled when that senile fool Reagan was elected. I was even more appalled when George W. Bush, airhead extraordinaire and utterly unqualified ignoramus, became president. The citizenry howls to destroy the science standards in our public schools, or complacently votes to lower property taxes at the expense of our children's minds. While we've quietly raised a rich crop in scattered little plots, we are about to be overwhelmed by the nightmarish weeds that overrun our neighbors'. We must stand up and shout, finally…and hope it's not too late.

I agree. Coulter and her ilk must be shown to be the lying hypocrites that they are. If your kitchen is crawling with roaches, you shouldn't just let them scurry around unseen in the dark. No, throw the light of day on those bastards, and grab the raid!

Over at Feministe, there's a contest going on in the comments for this thread to come up with the best insult for Ann without insulting race, gender, or otherwise. One of my favorite insults for Ann used to be that she was really "Andy Kaufman in drag." Not referring to anything about her appearance or dubious feminity, but rather to her schlockyness, and how it was so over the top that it had to be a joke a-la Kaufman.

However, I can totally see how that could seem insulting to the transgendered and will no longer use it. I remember reading on some blog somewhere that I don't remember comments about how Ann Coulter was a 'cunt' and how the person commenting would really 'like to rape her.' And that was one of the more disturbing things I've ever read on a blog. Not to mention all the comments about how she's anorexic, has an adam's apple, what have you. So no more of that.

But read the contest suggestions. My favorites are "Fascist Barbie" and "Vomitbag."

Finally, there's this amusing image from Mike Tidmus' blog: Codless.

And yes, I'm still pregnant.

Still pregnant

Yeah, still pregnant. But enjoying my early baby vacation time. Will blog as I feel like it.

Oh Lordy

Still pregnant. Oh my lord am I pregnant. Right now it feels like I'm carrying a watermelon between my thighs. The pain in my hips and pelvis is still there, although I can't quite tell whether or not it's getting better or if I'm just getting used to it.

I haven't felt much like blogging. It's too hot (101 degrees yesterday!) to do much more than lie on the couch and watch Law & Order reruns with a sort of dazed look on your face.

Still not sleeping much, which given the current hour seems obvious. I've gotten on a weird cycle where I sleep for two or three hours, wake up for five or six, then sleep for two or three again. I'm assuming it's my body preparing for the sleep cycles of a newborn, although it could be anxiety.

It's not like there's not plenty to blog about, though. Let's see...

The situation about the Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha murdering a bunch of civilians for no good reason continues to get less press than I think it should. It seems clear to me that outright murder is the logical conclusion of the mindset evidenced by our troops after the Abu Ghraib scandal. This is the sort of thing that happens in a ground war, which is why you shouldn't engage in one unless it's a last resort. Which it pretty much never is.

There was a really good special on the Sundance Channel, if you have cable or satellite, that goes into this a bit. It's called The Human Behavior Experiments, and is reviewed at Slate here. The review is right that it's a little pulpy in its presentation, but it's worth watching to see how things like Abu Ghraib can happen so easily when people are put in certain, unrestricted authority type situations.

To paraphrase one of the psychologists interviewed, "These weren't bad apples, it was the barrel that was bad."

This is, again, the sort of thing that seems obvious. It's highly irresponsible to take people, stress them out incredibly, put them in positions of pretty much unlimited authority, push the idea that the enemy is inhuman, and expect them to act normal. Sure, these 'apples' were bad and should be punished for their behavior, but until the 'barrel' is changed then it will just happen again and again.

Ugh, it's all very emotionally draining for me to contemplate right now. I think my pregnancy hormones are doing a last minute catapult into the stratosphere. I'm finding myself in a constant state of slight panic, which I'm sure is pretty bad for the baby.

I've started my maternity leave early as my doctor says my blood pressure is slightly too high and I should be taking it easy. That, and the pelvis pain makes it impossible to do pretty much anything besides the forementioned Law & Order rerun watching (seriously, it's on one particular channel or another 24 hours a day).

But I'm bored out of my skull stuck at home all day, and I think Brian and I are starting to wear thin on each other. He's quitting smoking at the same time as all of this (poor guy), and his edginess combined with my hormones (and the frigging heat) make for some lively fireworks.

But he's also been so sweet, rubbing my back and fetching me things and making sure I stay rested. And plus he's a genius. He McGuyver'd up a swamp cooler out of a box fan and a damp bath towel.

I'm positive that if it weren't for him being around I would have collapsed into a gibbering mess several months ago. I guess that's marriage, when you're thinking to yourself, "You're so irritating, and I love you so much."

I'll have to get him a father's day present, but I'm not sure what.

Anyway, enough personal blathering. Is it wrong of me to laugh at this story?

KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.

"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

I know I'm doing nothing but reinforcing the atheist-as-heartless-babyeater stereotype here, but I'm sorry, that's hilarious.

Sigh. Only a few more weeks to go. Maybe I'll go into labor today and have a devil baby (link on that via Pandagon).