What's Happening Here?

No 3-D in the entire theater?



What are we, animals?

BuboBlog Too Hot for the Internet?

Some of you tried to visit the blog this morning and were greeted with a message saying it was taken down for violating Google's terms of use.



I would like to say this happened because I finally pushed things TOO FAR with controversial content, or perhaps one of my attempted Internet memes took off and crashed the server.

Sadly, it was because someone hacked into my Gmail account and used it to send spam. The account shares the same password as my Blogger account, so the blog had to be shut down while I changed it.

Great Views of 'Prostitution Mountain'

A few people have sent me links to Doug McCune's 3-D maps of San Francisco crime.

The idea is to show incidents of crime topographically. It gives a great at-a-glance view of where certain crimes are most prevalent.



The ridge shown here, mostly located in the Tenderloin and the Mission, has become known as "Prostitution Mountain."



Even if we don't quite live on Prostitution Mountain, our place would certainly have a fantastic view of it.

My question: Can we do a map of toddler sit/lie violations? I think our street could be the epicenter.

Elliot in 'Say What?'

Elliot is a man of few words. In fact, here are all of them in 60 seconds.



Some of his enunciation may be a little dicey, but I only used words in the video that he knows the meaning of and can use in context.

UPDATE: Hmm...I made the video widescreen for the first time. But it's hard to view in the embedded version. Maybe better to click through to the YouTube page.

SECOND UPDATE: I changed my blog's template, which should allow the movie to be shown without the edge being cut off. Plus it looks pretty snazzy now, no?

Customized iPad Ad

Remember the defaced iPad bus-stop ad that I pointed out earlier?

Well, today I saw a more sophisticated approach. A porn site printed a sticker and pasted it into the ad so that it looks like part of the original graphic. (I used photo-editing software to block out the details of the porn site in the picture below.)



The bus stop was a block from where Apple is holding its big developer conference this week. I guess the irony is that Apple bars pornographic apps from the iPhone and iPad. So maybe this is as close as they'll get.

Well, That's Just Terrible Advice

We were reading a touch-and-feel book to Elliot when we got to this page about wolves.

"Forget about your fears. He's just a big and hairy dog, with furry, pointed ears."

I'd say having kids scared of wolves is probably a good thing (given there were more than 20 fatal wolf attacks over the past decade).

What's next, "Grizzly Bears are just like teddy bears, only bigger. Go stroke his tongue"?

I hope they don't sell this book in Canada.

Attack of the Clones

In Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go," which is set in an alternate-reality England, a group of boarding-school youths discover they were cloned to provide organ transplants. The clones are kept separate from the people they were copied from, and though they're allowed to experience life and love, they eventually have to accept that they only exist to be replacement parts for people they'll never meet.

I feel like a strange version of this is unfolding in Elliot's toy chest.

It all started when Elliot became very attached to two things: his duck-headed security blanket ("Yaya") and his Antelope doll. He can't go to sleep without them and frequently carries them around the house. He's had both since he was born.







It became apparent early on that even though Elliot cherished Yaya and Antelope, his constant mawing of them would destroy them in short order. Elliot spends most of the night with Yaya jammed in his mouth and the amount of saliva he produces is shockingly large based on his body size.

So Kelly went out and found two additional Yayas and another Antelope.



I understand the practicality of it, but something about this seems viscerally wrong. I had a cherished security blanket when I was Elliot's age (my "Dodo"), and I was very sad when it was gone. But no one went out and secretly procured exact duplicates.

To prevent Elliot from being confused by the clones, I tried to make sure he never saw more than one Yaya or Antelope at the same time. But since we're constantly having to wash at least one of them, it's hard to keep track of where they are. Then I became concerned he would see them in different rooms and assume that teleportation was possible.

In any event, Elliot discovered the duplicates and is now starting to insist that he sleep with more than one at a time. If he suddenly needs all three Yayas, does this mean we need to buy six or nine to ensure that he never has to suffer when they "die"? What kind of horrible arms race have we gotten into?

Future parents, please learn from our mistakes.