The Last Ephor

Two Thirty three AM. He was up again at 2:33 AM. For. The. Day. I feel like death warmed over. It's like being hungover without getting to enjoy the beer the night before. He was very upset and crying and wouldn't stay in he bed or even his room. I have a headache of truly epic proportions that nothing seems to quell. I'm crankier than Keith Olberman at a GOP convention and my eyes are burning like I've been in a swimming pool for hours. Best of all? A birthday party for tomorrow for my son and, God help me, 14 other 5 year olds. This is supposed to have passed by now as the medication should be out of his system. If this is not a side effect of the medication and simply the new norm, I have major, major problems. Other than slightly increased aggression he seems totally unaffected by the whole thing which is, frankly, unfair. I wish I had half his energy. If I could bottle it and sell it, I certainly wouldn't be blogging to you lot. I'd be sitt...

First up: George Soros' anti-Americanism in his own words: "I'm not looking for a worldwide recession. I'm looking for a significant shift of power and influence away from the US in particular and a shift in favour of the developing world, particularly China." Game, set, match. He wants to see China ascendant and America pushed aside. Yes, China the bastion of freedom, liberty and meek foreign policy. I will no longer suffer any fool who tells me Soros is not anti-American. Further, anything he funds with his zillions is rightly labeled anti-American. Second; Remember when Russia resumed it's air patrols off the coast of the US and some people blamed Bush ('natch). It was his reckless and aggressive foreign policy that started it all. Now we're seeing Russia making test bombing runs off the coast of Europe . Do we blame Sarkozy or Zapatero? Those warmongering French I suppose. Up next, " Police stumbled upon a bomb-making factory ...

So, the lack of blogging lately can be attributed to one thing: lack of sleep. No, it's not the baby, it's my eldest. He started some new medication recently and when we discussed it with the doctor she never mentioned that insomnia was one of the possible side effects. (Shame on me for not reading the fine print on the side effects). After about a week, he stopped sleeping normally. He would go to bed at regular time (circa 8:00 PM) and then he'd be coming into our bedroom around 2:00 AM. Up. For. The. Day. I have to mention here that the his energy level is also atypical for kids his age. He's 7 but in addition to being autistic, he has ADHD. Yes. So imagine your 7 year old after 3 Red Bulls at 2:00 AM for 8 days in a row. I'm literally falling asleep any time I'm not actively doing something. My wife and I are at our wits end. We stopped the medication a few days ago but this insomnia has not abated. In fact, it may not. This may be the new n...

See that widget on the side that tracks visitors? Yes, that one. I've noticed that the number of visitors recorded by Sitemeter is vastly lower than those tracked by the widget? Does anyone know why? Oddly I see numbers that vary wildly on Sitemeter between zero and a hundred while the widget seems to track a fairly even number of visitors. Just strikes me as odd, that's all.

Via Paul . New album by Ravonna: "In his inner sanctuary"

Love the look in the kid's face.

First, some good news: Hamas Leader's Son Among 19 Killed in Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts . Now if we can just keep climbing that ladder... Karl Rove was Satan incarnate. The Evil High Dark Master of dirty politics. So loved is he that now Hillary is imitating him. Lawrence Lessig calls this Clinton Swiftboating. More about her raw, naked ambition. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/we-know-these-p.html For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose...What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disquali...

Fair warning: possibly graphic post and not for the squeamish. So it all started Friday night. Wife and I had a long day (as usual) and had finally finished with dishes, laundry and the rest of the normal daily grind. The baby had been fussy most of the day and had spit up here and there. Mostly we thought it had been switching from formula to milk which can sometimes cause this type of thing. By the time kid #4 rolls around you tend to let these things slide. If this were #1 we'd have called in a medivac at the first sign of vomiting in a 1 year old. He finally calmed down and we got him off to sleep. We watched a bit of The Wire and retired (very) late. About 10 minutes later #2 wakes up crying complaining of a stomach ache. I ask if he has to go to the bathroom and he says no, it's not that. His stomach really hurts. OK, into my bed and I'll get the heating pad for a bit. We get him settled and he calms down. Knowing that he tends towards the dramatic, I s...

Entire family has been felled by the mother of all stomach flu viruses. I'll be back when/if this ever ends.

I feel like a guy who lives by the side of the river. Every day I get in my kayak and paddle like hell upstream. At the end of the day I get out, exactly where I started and sleep in my tent. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Romney and Clinton Huckabee and Obama Why pair them so? Simply put, they are cut from the same cloth. Romney and Clinton are craven, calculating and vacillate with the political winds. Huckabee and Obama do not. They actually listen to questions, think and then answer. Romney and Clinton aren't listening so much as screening for key words in the question(s) which trigger their brains to spit out response #2,413 with the appropriately associated platitudes. The mere look of Romney makes me queasy. He is the quintessential blow-dried, coiffed, manicured and buffed politician. I've heard little of what he says and trusted none of what little I've heard. Hillary has been foisting platitudes since the mid-90's. It was enough to get New Yorkers to elect her as Senator. (A feat which, to this day, makes me feel ashamed of my birthplace. That the denizens of Gotham, who are supposed to be the most jaded people on earth would roll over for a carpetbagging Southerner ...

Yesterday I was upstairs working and my wife and kids were downstairs not working. My contractor Father in Law was finishing the quarter rounds on the new floor in the kitchen. The phone rings and a minute later I hear my wife calling me. Panic rising in her voice. I ask her what's up and she says; "That was the school. They want to know if Oldest got in the house OK because there was no adult present when the bus pulled away." This is bad because: 1. Oldest is autistic 2. Oldest has no sense of danger whatsoever 3. Oldest is non-verbal 4. Oldest is not here I can feel the blood draining from my face. My heart starts racing and the acrid metallic taste of adrenaline floods my mouth. Now what? I get on the phone immediately to the school and my wife calls the dispatch office for the bus company. She is threatening people with grievous bodily harm if they have dropped our son off at the wrong house. I am simultaneously on the phone with the school and ...

How 'bout this one? Personally I think we should make our soldier's helmets look like this.

I received 78 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you? Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

Merry Christmas!

Your Score : Saffron You scored 75% intoxication, 25% hotness, 75% complexity, and 25% craziness! You are Saffron! Those other spices have nothing on you! You're warm, smart, and you make people feel really good (and with no side-effects!). You can be difficult to get to know and require a lot of those who try, but you're so totally worth it. *Sigh* Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating , home of the The Dating Persona Test h/t: Miriam

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"Libertarians spend as much time dreaming about the end of the drug war, a return to the gold standard, and the death of the income tax as Republicans fantasize about prayer in public schools and no abortions and Democrats covet socialized medicine and a minimum wage of $42/hour."

This one always bothered me. One of the best things about growing up where I did was that every act (major or minor) played nearby. With a zillion venues to fill, there was a great concert nearly every weekend. The meager earnings of my crappy high school job forced me to be selective. I had to pick and choose which ones to attend. Even then, I was intent on getting the best seat possible. That meant one of two things. You had to be first on line at the nearest Ticketmaster booth or you had to go to a scalper. I very very rarely went for the latter option it was just too expensive. I was able to get some really good tickets on occasion but mostly I was relegated to the nosebleed sections. As I got older, the scalpers would eat up more and more blocks of tickets with rapidity that all be forced you buy from them. Either that or start your own band and you might be allowed in to your own show. Now its getting worse. Small wonder that the thieves scalpers have figured out a wa...