Life with a three-year-old

Tonight for dinner, we made pasta with ground turkey and peppers (red, yellow, green - from a frozen mix we like).  Michael has loved this combination in the past.  He was extremely cheerful as we prepared it and got his fork and drink ready ahead of time, waiting until everything cooled off and dinner was served ... whereupon he promptly announced that "I don't LIKE peppers, Mama!" and burst into tears.  This turned into a full-on meltdown at the table.  I told him I was sorry he was sad, but if he wanted to cry he couldn't do it at the table.  Finally I had to remove him to his room.  I didn't close the door, so he slammed it dramatically for me and flopped on his bed to wail for awhile.  After a few minutes, I went back to get him and told him he could have some crackers if he didn't want pasta.  He accepted this and came back to eat some crackers, while I took his bowl and said, "Wow, I love peppers, so I'll just eat your dinner."  After I ate all the peppers there was some pasta left so Michael asked if he could eat it.  I said fine.  He finished that and then said, "Oh, let me check the pot on the stove and see if there is any more.  Can I please have some pasta and peppers?  I LOVE peppers, Mama."

He ate an entire helping.

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

I like to think of myself as someone that allows an artist a certain space to present his work, without allowing my personal biases to intrude on the work that is presented. I enjoy a wide variety of films, television, and music. I don't try to exclude a work if I know that an artist is sincere in his efforts and talented enough to share something of substance with the world.

But I do have a high standard when it comes to investing my time and resources to a particular work of art. And there has been no piece of art that I have invested more heavily in over my entire life than Star Wars. From toys to videos to DVDs to message board chatter, and yes, even my relationship with Kim ;D.

I've tolerated the countless changes made to the original trilogy over the years; mainly, in the belief that the artist who had conceived of these films had the best intentions when making these changes. I didn't think that Han shooting in self-defense instead of non-chalant annoyance fundamentally altered the overall arc of the films.

And, while increasingly ambivalent about the prequels, I did not take the hardline stance that some older fans had in dismissing them altogether.

However, in the video above, which has leaked before the official Blu-Ray release, comes a change so poorly conceived and executed that it boggles the mind how it made through the entire upgrade process without someone (anyone!) voicing some objection. From what I understand, these Blu-Ray discs took 3 years to create, and went through three separate revision cycles, to catch the tiniest artifact or color correction. At some point during those 3 long years someone (I'm presuming George Lucas) thought it would be an awesome idea to add dialogue to Vader's reflection and ultimate decision to save his son from certain death. And no one, at any point in this process, could stop this stupid, stupid change from happening.

I had been leaning towards buying the Blu-Ray releases in a couple week, mainly for the behind the scenes material, but after witnessing this debacle, and several other changes, I will not continue to financially support Lucasfilm and its founder until I have some confidence that there is someone in charge who understands why these films mean so much to so many people around the world.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go cry into my Star Wars matching pillowcases tonight.

You did pick the wrong line

I would never have guessed math theory was involved in this ... then again, that's why I went to law school! Fascinating.

Jobs FAIL

More good news out of Washington today!

The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm
payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in con-
struction, manufacturing, and retail trade. (BLS)

That's awesome! Just what we were promised by the President when he signed the Stimulus bill. Let's take a look at what the Obama administration promised us October would look like with the stimulus (DARK BLUE LINE):



Whoops! What happened here? Did the $780 Billion Stimulus have no effect on the economy? Let's see what Obama has to say about that:

Nearly 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, the government said Friday, and the White House declared the nation on track to meet the president's goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year.

New job numbers from businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities were released, showing 640,329 positions credited to the stimulus, according to the independent federal board monitoring the program's progress. (Yahoo!)

That sounds good. But how did the Obama administration figure out how many jobs were "created or saved"?:

- A review of the latest stimulus reports - which the White House promised would undergo extensive reviews to ensure accuracy - found that more than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act by Head Start programs involved pay increases. (Boston Globe)

- An early progress report on President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced. (AP)

- More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.

Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187. (Chicago Tribune)

- The federal government sent Bob Bray $26,174 in stimulus aid to fix a fence and replace the roofs on public apartments in Blooming Grove, Texas, a town of fewer than 900 people outside Dallas. He hired five roofers and an inspector to do the job.

But the number of jobs he reported to the government looked very different — 450 jobs.

"Oh, no," said Bray, who runs the local public housing authority part-time with his wife, Linda, when asked about the discrepancy. He said that he told the government that he had created six jobs but that a federal official told him that wasn't right. So he reported the number of hours the roofers worked instead. The Department of Housing and Urban Development caught the mistake, but he couldn't fix it before the jobs figures were published. "The money was great, but the reports are really confusing," he said. "I've been fighting with it for over a month and a half." (USA Today)

Gosh, It looks like there's been a lot of "rounding up" going on in the Obama administration. Sometimes you have to do that so that numbers aren't too confusing. Math is hard. :/

Maybe this graph will clear things up:

Money for Nothing

Barack Obama was elected on a mandate of change in the November presidential election, and boy has he delivered! After his stern remarks last night in his manufactured press conference, the Democrats (and 3 Republican traitors) did their job this afternoon in passing the stimulus bill.

U.S. Senate Approves $838 Billion Stimulus Package

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate approved an $838 billion economic stimulus package, clearing the way for negotiations with the House over a compromise plan that President Barack Obama wants lawmakers to send him within days.

The Senate today voted 61 to 37 to approve its measure. The bill provides $293 billion in tax cuts and more than $500 billion in new spending that the legislation’s supporters call critical to preventing the economy from sinking deeper into recession.

After the Senate added $838 billion (with interest!) to the national debt, President Obama's tax-evading treasury secretary Timothy Geithner did his part to destroy the confidence of the American financial system.

Geithner unveils new bank rescue plan

Creating a private-public partnership to take toxic assets off banks' balance sheets. Policymakers believe clearing bank balance sheets of badly deteriorated loans and securities is a prerequisite for restoring the normal flow of credit into the economy. Geithner said the plan will aim initially to use public financing to create as much as $500 billion in private sector buying capacity, with the prospect of an expansion to $1 trillion down the road.

The U.S. stock market processed both actions today with incredible swiftness:

[caption id="attachment_623" align="aligncenter" width="468" caption="-381.99 (4.62%)"][/caption]

This exchange from Arrested Development pretty much sums up today:

Board Member #3: Why should we believe in you?

G.O.B.: For the same reason you should believe a hundred dollar bill is no more than a hundred pennies!

G.O.B.: They approved me unanimously.

Michael: Why wouldn’t they? You’ve only lost them 99 dollars so far.

Show stoppers

The music situation at our parish has not improved at all since Mike wrote about it a few weeks ago.  (Well, why would it?)  If anything, it is becoming even harder to bear.  I usually love singing at Mass, but I can't bring myself to sing most of this stuff at all, much less with any enthusiasm.  Last week there was a choir-only song at communion, with the first line "This iiiiiiis, the moment of graaaaaace," which sounded for all the world like a Broadway number.  Standard sweeping piano intro, soft start, rousing chorus, etc.  A pure performance piece. In fact, when I googled it later, it sounded quite a lot like Jekyll and Hyde's "This is the moment."  (Or Spamalot's "The song that goes like this" - heh.)  I like Broadway just fine.  I don't find it particularly liturgical, though.

This week, in addition to the standard Gloria and Sanctus that involve multiple gratuitous repetitions of, for instance, "blessed is he, blessed is he, blessed is heeee" and "hosanna (ho-sa-ha-na), hosanna (ho-sa-ha-na), hosanna," we had the regular children's liturgy song for children to process out.  ("Children, listen to the word of God!" - complete with "Children's!" (tm) type happy piano music.)  We also had two hymns that were so awful liturgically that today I was still shaking my head.  The first was called "As a fire is meant for burning," text by Ruth Duck, arrangement by Marty Haugen.  Misleadingly, the tune was actually a traditional one, but the lyrics involved such choice lines as how we go out into the world "not to preach our creeds or customs, but to build a bridge of care."  Gee, I thought the Catholic Church actually cared quite a bit about our creed.  Right?  We do recite it every week.  And "bridge of care"??  The hymn also contained a feel-good reference to being "seekers" and creating oneness "'mid earth's peoples, many hued."  You could not come up with a better collection of hippie-type platitudes if you were trying hard to parody it.  A bit of research determined that Ruth Duck is exactly who you might come up with if you were trying to create a parody of a hippie-type "womyn's" liturgist.  Duck, who very unfortunately actually has an M.A. from Notre Dame, is an ordained UCC minister (hence the no-creed stuff - fits right in with the UCC, which is great, but not the Catholic Church!) who lives with her "partner" (at least he's a guy) in a liberal Chicago suburb, has written a book about revising the names of the persons of the Trinity to not be so male, and has made part of her approach to hymns to be to "revise old hymns that would provide an alternative to traditions showing God as exclusively male."  I could not roll my eyes any more than I am right now.  Her music is used in many denominations, which is great for her, but her theology is clearly not Catholic.  I have no idea how this has worked its way into Catholic hymnody.

The second awful hymn yesterday, liturgically speaking, was called, "Let us be bread."  This starts off with "Let us be bread . . . life for the world / Let us be wine, love freely poured."  Okay.  Well, while we are part of the Body of Christ, I'm pretty sure we aren't the bread or wine ourselves.  I'm pretty sure that's just Christ.  But move on to the first verse: we switch from at least singing in our own persons, to singing in the person of Christ (which we're really not supposed to do), "I am the bread of life, broken for all / Eat now and hunger no more."  Back to chorus.  Another verse: "See how my people have nothing to eat / Give them the bread that is you."  Again, this is a confusion of persons - I'm not even sure if this verse is supposed to be spoken as if Christ was saying to us, or what - ?  What is this stuff?  Whatever it is, the focus is certainly on us, much more than on the actual Body and Blood of Christ that we are supposed to be focusing on during the Eucharist.  The writer of this hymn actually is Catholic, and unfortunately also has a degree from Notre Dame in music and theology.  The focus is just unfortunate - I have to assume it's the same poor catechesis so many of us have had in the last forty years.

Here's the thing - music during Mass is not supposed to be about drawing attention to the choir.  It's not supposed to draw automatic applause every week.  It's not supposed to be about telling ourselves how great we all are.  And it's not supposed to rely on sappy platitudes (contained in treacly musical numbers) that are completely devoid of any theological substance.  It's supposed to integrate into the liturgy as part of the prayer and worship, and it's supposed to help us orient ourselves interiorly and exteriorly towards a more reflective, reverent posture in the Mass.  I like participating in singing, but not at the expense of abandoning good music and good theology.

In any event, rolling my eyes throughout Mass is not a good posture to be assuming.  I know that.  So last week I decided to try and do something about it.  Even if it eventually comes to nothing, at least I'll have tried!  More on this in another post.

ARGH!

So it turns out home warranties are completely meaningless documents. After notifying the home warranty company on Wednesday night that our water heater had started leaking, flooding the closet and part of the media room, they waited until midday Thursday to call a plumber to come take a look at it.

The plumber was scheduled to come between 9-1 this morning and came at the tail end of that time block. After he inspected the water heater he proceeded to reveal to Kim that the water heater had a hole in it. REALLY?1? A HOLE?!? HOW SHOCKING!!!

But, of course, he couldn't fix the hole, and he couldn't schedule an appointment to replace the water heater because they don't do same-day installation. The earliest he could schedule it would be Monday. His only solution was to go outside and turn off the water for the ENTIRE house, which according to his plan, would leave us without water all weekend.

I received a follow-up call from the warranty company almost immediately. The representative was not very helpful. It turns out that if you do the installation yourself (or have another company do it) they only pay out $300. She seemed that we would be without water all weekend and continue to have water leak all weekend. (How long does it take for a 50-gallon tank to drain?)

After I talked to her, I immediately got on the horn with Lowe's, which is just around the corner. They were extremely helpful. They will be able to come out tomorrow morning between 8-11 to install a brand new 12-year water heater. The total cost will be just under $900. So, thanks to the generosity of the home warranty company, we will only be responsible for 2/3 of that. All because their plumber wouldn't do same day install.

Of course, we also have the movers coming to the townhouse between 8-11 to get our furniture, and we have Rooms to Go coming between 9-1 to deliver our sofas and cabinet, so Kim and I will each be manning our respective properties. Our hope is to have the water back on by midday, and we can end this ridiculous week on a note of calm.

On a personal note, thanks to Jones Day for finally finding an assignment that would keep Kim occupied 18 hours each day this week. It only took you 8 months to do that, and you guys have impeccable timing. I bet they'll try to call her while she's giving birth to see if she can draft a quick lease in between pushes.

/end sarcasm