Bizarro World

Today, Bulldozer had a meltdown.

Okay, he had several, which is unusual for a Thursday anymore.

What is really, really weird, though, is what triggered the first one.

He was doing his journal, after doing speech -- without a single attempt at hitting, yay -- and had written that today was Thursday.

Yay Bulldozer.

Then he had to write that it was November.

Not October or December.

November.

Instant level 8 meltdown, complete with wounded-mo0se-like wailing and culminated in actual screaming -- which he borrowed from PH, not-yay.

Now, if he had some sort of deep moral objection to November, you'd have thought that it would have manifested itself in the several other days' worth of journals that all also happened in November.

On a totally unrelated note, NASA has nifty sounds recorded by the Cassini-Hugyens spacecraft near Saturn.  Some of them sound like they could have been lifted right from a 50s sci-fi show.  What do you think?  Coincidence or prescience?

Happy Birthday Amie!

Hope you had a great one. :-)

Groundhog Day

Warning. I am going to whine. I am going to be...petty and probably not well-represented here. It's just that kinda day.

So, as I said recently, any sci-fi show that can even remotely justify doing a "groundhog day" episode does one sooner or later; the most recent was Blood Ties. As with anything that has become a cliche, the execution can be really good or really bad...and this one was quite good.

My life, on the other hand, has rapidly begun to resemble its own groundhog day episode, except that the student having issues changes.

Today, it was PH, who got on the bus screaming and didn't stop until about 9:15. I have no idea what caused it, because the only explanation he could give me was not true -- he said someone on the bus bothered him, but the bus driver said he'd gotten on the bus upset.

In return, both M and Superhero were angels (M did lose it at the end of the day, but after listening to that, I was about to lose it). Superhero even exceeded what I'd intended for him to do on his science quiz. Yay.

(Of course, I can't count; I made him a water molecule to complete for the quiz and gave him one H and two Os.)

I had a hard time shaking the week off this past weekend; it's weeks like this that make me want a job I can go to, do my job, and leave when the day is over.

Meanwhile, Elastigirl was very grumpy after lunch today. I reminded Aide J (again) to move away from her, and got a wide-eyed, "Oh, okay," for my efforts. It's like she wants to get the bejeezus beaten out of her, which is a concept I'm not willing to entertain yet.

Then, when Speech Person DFT came in to talk about Elastigirl, she started to speak to Aide J (not me). Elastigirl was in full meltdown mode at this point because, as usual, I was speaking to brick walls today. (She even used her VOCA -- speech device -- to request attention, and I got dirty looks for reinforcing that, 'cause, apparently, VOCAs aren't better than scratching...but what do I know?)

Anyhow, I told DFT that she shouldn't speak to Aide J at the moment because Elastigirl would not be able to handle it. What does she do? Speaks to Aide J for a really long time. I try redirecting her twice and give up, secretly -- and, yes, I know this is petty and ill-becoming -- hoping Elastigirl would snap and hit her for a change, if only so I could say, "I told you so."

However, I did see a nifty bumper sticker on the way home that said, "Give Bush and inch and he'll think he's a ruler." Heh.

If I get over myself, I may post later on the writer's strike.

The Trouble With Martians

Back before the Internet was the Internet, before the AOL floppy disks that promised 10 free hours!, before the general public even knew what email was, there was CompuServe, and there were bulletin boards.

Now, I realize that for those of you who didn't grow up related to Early Adopter Computer Nerds, that means very little, so I'll take a wild guess and say I'm probably thinking of the mid to late eighties -- say around 87 or 88.  1990 at the latest.

Anyhow, around this time, my dad began to correspond with David Gerrold, who is famous among fandom circles for writing the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" in his late teens or early 20s.

Of course, in true nerd fashion, they never discussed tribbles or Trek, but rather Lotus Notes or somesuch.

I've always felt just a tiny kinship with him after that, just by virtue of the fact that he was a kinda, sorta, maybe virtual acquaintance -- dare I say friend? -- of my dad's.

So, I was quietly rooting for Martian Child -- which is based on his life, though they changed a few key details (he was never married, for one, and wrote the eponymous book about being the single gay parent of a troubled, adopted kid -- which I didn't know until I heard about the movie).  It doesn't look like it did too well.

In his review, David Gerrold seems to have liked it.  So at least there's that.

And, no, I didn't see it.  Movies give me headaches -- I believe that I can see the difference in frame rate (film is essentially 25 frames per second, where TV is 30) and my eyes strain themselves, trying to ignore the flicker -- but I'll probably rent it eventually.