Science is Sexy and the Robots are Coming

A friend of mine recently mentioned how sick she's getting of the current prevalence of vampires in books, movies, and tv shows. From Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, they're everywhere. And it's not just in the books and movies, it's the product tie-ins and the tween t-shirts and the expectation that anyone give a rat's ass about Team Jacob or Edward. Don't get me wrong....I read all the Twilight books, saw two of the movies, and am currently catching up on True Blood. But I know exactly where my friend is coming from. At first, it was novel and interesting, but now it's just getting to be passe.

The problem with getting rid of one fad is that there's always another one ready to replace it. In this case, I'm prepared to make a prediction on what fad will follow vampires. Bear in mind that I'm not making this prediction willy-nilly. I've put some thought into various factors that might come into play, including what made vampires popular in the first place, what trend is ready for a comeback, and what current trends might bleed over into pop culture. After considering several possibilities, I predict that the next pop culture trend will be....robots.

If robots do make a resurgence, it's going to require a book, movie, or tv series to spark the fire, but the kindling is already there. Robots have been popular before, but it's been awhile. There was The Day the Earth Stood Still in the 50's. There was Vickie the Android and the Terminators in the 80's. The 90's brought us Lt. Commander Data, and in 1999/2001 we had Bicentennial Man and A.I.. Most recently, there was I, Robot in 2004. So while there has certainly been a thread of interest in robots for quite some time, I think a resurgence of "robot mania" is right around the corner. This continual undercurrent of interest is ready to erupt. The only thing required is for someone to come along and make robots sexy. Someone needs to give us a robot with a heart of gold, a sense of humor, an acceptably tortured psyche, and a sex drive. Someone needs to do for robots what Twilight did for vampires.*

If you aren't convinced that robots are primed to make a comeback, look no further than Verizon wireless. All you people out there with iPhones are certainly still convinced that there is no substitute, but if you've spent much time with one of the latest Android phones, you'll know that the playing field has been leveled. Android isn't actually a phone, it's an operating system, but Verizon knows that if you try to explain that to the average cell phone buyer, their eyes are going to glaze over and they're going to get distracted by some other shiny object. So Verizon got permission from George Lucas to brand their Android phones as "Droids". The phones are thin, smart, fast, more popular than ever, and advertised using a robotic motif. Score one for the robots.

Finally, I think robots are ready to come back because science is cool again. Science no longer means you're a dork who hangs out in a lab, it means you're capable and intelligent. Even the Emmy award winning series The Big Bang Theory, which paints 4 physicists as geeks on the outlying corners of social interaction, had enough sense to pair up Leonard with the stereotypical hot chick, Penny. There is also the 2007 movie adaptation of I Am Legend to consider. The main character is Robert Neville, who is one of the few survivors after a virus turns most of the earth's population into light-hating, human eating creatures. If they'd stayed truer to the book, Neville would have been a fairly uneducated alcoholic, but instead, the movie paints him a methodical scientist who keeps a lab in his basement and is actively developing an antidote to the virus. He's also played by Will Smith. In other words, science is sexy.

So there you have it. Popularity is a fickle thing, so it might end up being centaurs or mermen, or demigods or aliens or any host of other things, but my money is on robots. I've tried to consider all the options and weigh the evidence. I've laid out my argument in a logical manner and stuck to a method in order to solve this pressing matter. Why go to so much trouble? Because science is sexy, and soon, robots will be too.

*Ok, ok, I know that Twilight wasn't the first series to make vampires sexy. I think Interview with a Vampire already did that, but I doubt most of the people with "Team Edward" posters know that. And of course, Anne Rice wrote that book 20 years before the movie came out and maybe someone else did it before her. I'm too lazy of a blogger to really trace this back to it's origins. You should know that about me by now.

Diet Dr. Pepper Tastes Nothing Like Regular Dr. Pepper

Having gotten some coupons in the mail yesterday, I decided to treat myself to lunch at Arby's today. My meal came with a drink and, trying to be somewhat health conscious, I chose diet Dr. Pepper. There are some diet drinks that I can easily drink without thinking about the "diet" designation with every swallow, but after taking a sip of my drink, I was reminded of the harsh reality that Diet Dr. Pepper is not one of those drinks.

Diet Dr. Pepper's slogan is "Diet Dr. Pepper...tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper." I know that slogans sometimes sacrifice grammar and accuracy in exchange for brevity, but this slogan makes no sense. The problem is that little "more." If you took it out, it would be a blatant lie, but with it in there, the phrase is begging for a "than." Did they update the formula and now Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than it used to? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than Sprite does? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than it tastes like chicken broth? The possibilities are open to interpretation.

The problem with diet drinks is that they are trying to taste like something that they'll never really taste like. Sodas are sweet. When you change that key ingredient, sugar, you'll inevitably get a different taste. In a way, I admire that Coke knows this well enough that they doesn't even bother trying to make Diet Coke taste like regular Coke. When Coke introduced Diet Coke in 1982, rather than making it a diet version of the original formula, they used a different formula entirely. In fact, when Coke make the ill-fated decision to change their original formula back in the 80's, they took the Diet Coke formula, made it with high fructose corn syrup and called it New Coke. It was a disaster. It wasn't till they came out with Coke Zero that you actually get to try the "original" coke recipe with a diet spin. So perhaps it would be more fitting if Dr. Pepper would lend their slogan to Coke. Then you could accurately say "Coke Zero tastes more like regular coke than Diet Coke does!"

I Want to Be My Own Shiny Object or Why I Don't Play WoW Anymore

While the human mind may, at times, have a notoriously short attention span, it also has the uncanny ability to fixate on a task to the point that all sense of time is lost. For example, last night I was laying on my bed playing a new game on my phone. It's a simple, repetitive game where you have to prioritize tasks and click through actions as quickly as possible. I kept trying to move to higher difficulties and beat my past times and before I knew it, Daniel came in to announce that he was heading to bed. It wasn't until that moment that I noticed that when the game is running, the clock on my phone disappears. I'd been playing the game for over a half an hour without even realizing it. My mind had been so fixated on the game that it took some outside intrusion on my attention in order to break the spell.

I've seen this cycle of mental inertia played out many times before. A mind in motion can remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. Casinos know all about it. They don't give you any clocks or windows to judge the passage of time in the hope that you'll just keep pulling levers and placing bets. Television marathons play a similar game when they remove the opening sequence and closing credits from between episodes. This runs one show into the next and before I know it, I'm 3 hours into a Real World marathon and none of my laundry is folded.

The good news is that this tendency can also be used to an advantage. Nabisco knows this as good as anyone. In recent years, they have started marketing many of their long-standing products in special "100 calorie" packs. All food has the nutritional information is right there on the package, so it should be easy to exercise portion control for ourselves, but a full size package of Chips Ahoy cookies is too easy to eat right through in a few days time. While nothing is keeping people from eating several 100 calorie packages in a sitting, the act of having to stop eating long enough to open a new package is often enough of a break in your attention that you have to decide whether or not to keep eating.

Knowing how easy it is to get lost in certain tasks makes me want to be more mindful of my actions. I've always felt like every moment of every day is a new chance to make a new choice, but in reality, those choices usually get made while my brain is on "auto pilot." Sometimes all it takes to snap me back to reality is a little shiny object, whether it's in the form of a tap on the shoulder, the credits at the end of a tv show, or the 10 seconds it takes to get another package of cookies. My goal now is to be my own shiny object. I can't always rely on chance to keep me from getting sucked in. I have to take the initiative to either set myself up for distraction or do my best to minimize them so that, at the very least, I can say that my precious time was spent on something of my own choosing.

I understand people's apprehension about holding babies. Knowing that you hold a new little life in your hands can be nerve wracking. This is especially true if you're a new parent or just aren't used to being around little ones. It's like going to a Catholic mass for the first time - you're not sure what to do and you don't want to look stupid. Even if you've done it before, you have to be able to match the baby's developmental stage with the proper holding technique. Emily has gone through several holding stages to get where she is today.

When Emily was a newborn, the general rules of caution applied. I had to make sure her limbs weren't crimped, her skin wasn't pinched, and most importantly that her head was supported. As she started to develop some neck strength, holding her became more casual, but her preferred position was still chest to chest with arms and legs tucked neatly under. There were many an afternoon when she assumed this position in a sling and happily slept while I cooked, did laundry, or watched tv. Once she had developed to a point where her sleeping didn't amount to near comatose and she struggled to tell day from night, she would sometimes fidget and squirm and cry when I held her. During these times, I would try many different methods of holding her, but often got the best results from having her perpendicular to my body with her head nestled into my side and her legs dangling about. This emulated the position she laid in while breastfeeding and I often thought that might have heightened its comfort. There were a couple of hard weeks when she and I spent most of the night in that position - her cradled in my arms, trying to learn what to do with her drooping eyes or her bursts of energy.

Emily is older now and her neck and legs are strong. She can even walk, which makes her more "toddler" than "infant". When I hold her, I hold her like a child, perched on my hip and supported by my forearm. She holds tight to the shirt on the back of my arm and I manage to accomplish quite a bit with her in tow. Just like we've moved past her gangly limbs and wobbly head, we've entered a time when sleepless nights are a distant memory. Her body has learned that, come 6:30, a fresh diaper and a bit of milk signals sleep. I can lay her down wide eyed and not hear another peep from her until morning.

When Emily got her first two teeth, they took me by surprise. I expected days or even weeks of fussiness with nights broken up by fits of crying. Instead, one day the teeth just appeared. They came later than expected, but with little fanfare. I expect more to arrive anytime and based on the last couple of days, the time may be sooner rather than later. Emily has had erratic naps and has woken up around 4am most nights this past week. It's mildly disruptive, but it only takes a minute of holding her up on my shoulder to put her to put her back to sleep. This evening, however, she woke up a half hour after we put her down. She went back to sleep, then woke up again an hour later. This second time, even after I laid her on my shoulder, she cried and fidgeted. I passed her off to Daniel while I retrieved the infant Tylenol, purchased months ago but never opened. I gave her the medicine and then sat in the glider to wait it out. She cried and squirmed and squirmed and cried. My arms got tired of trying to hold her still, so I reclined the glider and let her move around. She pushed with her feet and tried to roll around and ended up with her head in the crook of my arm and her legs laid across the arm of the chair. For the first time in months, I held that little girl like a baby, which turned out to be exactly what she needed. Whether it was the medicine or the position, she managed to fall back asleep and stayed that way till morning. We might have more nights like this ahead of us, but at least now I know what to expect and I know for certain that this growing little girl will always be my baby.

House of Pain - Coming to a Town Near You!

There is a certain class of supposedly fun things that I've never managed to derive much pleasure from. It's the sort of things that people don't so much "enjoy" as "endure". The things I have in mind, such as horror movies, hot foods, or roller coasters are all intentionally designed to create a sense of mental and physical discomfort, anxiety, or fear. How this translates into a fun experience is beyond me. However, I would hate for my shortsighted understanding to inhibit my potential, so I've decided that if I ever come into a large sum of money and am looking for a risky (but potentially lucrative) investment opportunity, I'm going to open a theme park targeting people who like this sort of thing. At the risk of giving away my best ideas, take a walk with me through the next great theme park experience - The House of Pain!

One of the basic components to any good theme park is thrill rides. The House of Pain will be no different. I want the tallest plunges, the fastest coasters, and the highest bungee jumping around. I want the worlds first roller coaster that positions riders upside down, suspended by their ankles while they're flung around like rag dolls. I want people to have to sign medical release forms before they even get into the park. We'll have paramedics on duty at all times, but only to add to the show of danger. Everything will be entirely safe, of course.

As for food, the hotter the better. The food stands at House of Pain will serve hot wings, nachos with extra jalapeños and BBQ sandwiches covered in sauce that makes your eyes water. In addition, the drinks will never be served at the same stands as food. In fact, I'll place all the drink stands in hard to locate, distant corners of the park. If you overestimate your tolerance for spicy foods, you'll have the added adventure of having to locate a frozen lemonade stand. Also, hot wings will only cost 25 cents each, but a bottle of water will set you back $10.

It might seem redundant to have a haunted house at a place like this, but ours will be a little different. Of course, there will be things jumping out when you least expect it, but we won't have any gory, violent imagery. Zombies and vampires are blase. Instead, we'll feature things you should really be scared of. My house of horrors will feature pictures of skin diseases and surprise encounters with middle aged hookers in tube tops. At the very end you'll be accosted with creepy photoshopped images of really improbable things like a lamprey's mouth superimposed onto the tip of someone's finger.*

To put the icing on the cake, I'm going to take the overall discomfort to a whole new level. This theme park will be impeccably clean, but the smell will be excruciating. Have you ever walked down Bourbon Street in New Orleans or perhaps Beale Street in Memphis? You know that aroma when it gets really hot and you can smell the humid fumes from last night's debauchery? It's a mixture of alcohol and urine and vomit. We're going to have vents that pump that smell into the park. I'm thinking we should even have aroma themes for different areas of the park. One area might give you the Beale Street experience. Another area will reek of skunks and we might even have a "fart zone" for the truly daring. The aroma vents will be clearly marked and you'll win a prize if you can stand directly in front of one of them for longer than 90 seconds.

This idea is still in development, but you can see that I've already got a pretty solid plan in the works. If you're interested in investing in the House of Pain, please let me know. I'm also accepting ideas for additional attractions that might go well with the theme. Do you think people would stand in line to get maced? In any case, I always imagined that if I owned a theme park, I would go there every weekend and skip to the front of lines or get free food. However, if this idea pans out, I'll probably just spend my weekends at home rolling around in all the money I'm going to make. All that wonderful, stinking money.

* Please do not google that unless you really think you can handle it. I thought I could, but after seeing it, I couldn't touch anything for days without thinking about it. You have been warned!

NASCAR and Twilight

I've been trying to put together a post on NASCAR, but I'm not sure what to say about it. A couple of months ago, I started a journey of trying to figure out why it's so popular and have found that it's starting to grow on me.  Translating that into a post, however, is proving difficult.  There are sports like football or baseball that allow for underdogs to come from way behind and win it in the end. This makes for exciting, tear-inducing movies, but NASCAR is more like tennis. You win by avoiding disaster and making your move when it counts. You have to develop an appreciation by understanding the rules and learning the strategies. But I don't want to write a blog entry that makes NASCAR sound like it's a fine wine that you have to develop a palette for. I mean, come on, it's a bunch of guys driving around in circles. 

Maybe I just haven't been watching NASCAR long enough to get my head around exactly how I feel about it.  Right now, the only thing I can think of is how much NASCAR reminds me of Twilight.  That may seem far-fetched, but I think the comparison is sound.  For starters, there's the drama.  Of course NASCAR is dramatic.  There are cars going close to 200 miles an hour with mere inches between them.  There is the constant threat of contact and crashes, the pressure on pit crews to shave seconds off their time, and the grudges that can form between drivers over the course of the season.  As for Twilight, that story is just oozing with drama.  Not drama over anything that people seriously have to worry about though.  It's drama about things like whether a young girl should go to the prom with a vampire or how to keep her father from finding out that her best friend is a werewolf.  I don't remember having to worry about that stuff when I was in high school.  

Another reason NASCAR reminds me of Twilight is people's reactions.  While there are people who seem to hate each one, I’m thinking more of the fans.  Fans of Twilight, and I'm talking the hardcore fans here, feel very strongly about it.  They have picked a side and they root for Jacob or Edward, regardless of the fact that they already know who "wins" in the end.  Then there are NASCAR fans.  They have their favorite drivers, their least favorite drivers, and given the chance, they'll pack up an RV and spend the weekend camped out on the infield of the Bristol Motor Speedway.

NASCAR and Twilight also have crazy merchandising.  In NASCAR, this is obviously evidenced by the cars and drivers themselves, which look like are moving billboards.  Every inch is covered in a logo or slogan.  You can tell a car a mile away just by seeing the huge M&Ms characters or the Miller Lite logo.  And if you think the sponsors are all major corporations and beer companies, you might want to talk to this guy:

That’s Mike Bliss next to the Kim Kardashian car.  But NASCAR doesn’t stop there…they’ll sell you anything they can put a logo on.  Twilight is the same way.  Let's see how they stack up:

 

	NASCAR	Twilight
Lunch boxes
Figurines
Jewelry
Underwear

So there you have it.  I can’t really explain why I’m starting to like NASCAR except by comparing it to one of my other inexplicable likes.  I don’t have a favorite driver, and I certainly don’t plan on ordering any of the merchandise seen above, but I did add Days of Thunder and Talledega Nights to my Netflix queue, and come the weekend, I’ll tune in to see who takes the checkered flag.

My New Hobby

Last night, Daniel and I had the pleasure of going to Outback. Toward the end of dinner, I realized I had a small speck of steak stuck between my back molars. Being in a public place, without even the meager privacy of a booth, there was only so much I could do to dislodge the steak. I dug around with my tongue, swished around some water....but I didn't have a toothpick and I wasn't about to unhinge my jaw and dig around with my finger. I tried not to think about it while we waited for our check, but once I know there is food stuck in my teeth, and once I've tried unsuccessfully for a couple of minutes to free it, it's hard to just drop the matter and stop thinking about it. Thankfully, we weren't there much longer so I was able to grab a toothpick on the way out and dig around on the way to the car. Once that little bit of food was out, I felt so relieved and triumphant. You'd think I'd slain a dragon.

Sitting in the car, basking in the victory of clean teeth, I realized this might be the feeling people chase when they're biting at their fingernails or picking their noses. You get this idea in your head that there's something there that shouldn't be and soon there is an obsessive need to get it out. When you finally do, it's like coming alive again with shorter nails and a cleaner nasal passage. Realizing what a positive feeling people are chasing when they engage in these undesirable habits, I decided I would harness this same obsessive need to sluff off bodily dross and use it for good. I decided I would start flossing.

I've never been a habitual flosser, and because I do it so infrequently, it hurts when I finally get around to it. Besides, once I've brushed, my mouth feels clean and fresh enough that flossing just seems unnecessary. But if you want to find out how untrue this is, eat a big steak, brush your teeth, then floss. You'll be amazed at how much brushing left behind.

It would be nice if I could adopt flossing simply for the inheirent benefits of the activity, but in the 25 years I've been responsible for taking care of my teeth, I've never been a regular flosser. Now, however, I'm coming at it from a new angle. It's like a quest deep into uncharted caves where I need to excavate as much as possible. Perhaps I'll even come across some rare artifact that I can show off to Daniel before tossing aside. I haven't told him yet about my new hobby, but i'm sure he's going to LOVE it.

There's a Reason They Call it "Classic"

We're considering getting a minivan and it was kinda freaking me out. I was getting all stressed about what sort of impact this would have on my self image, my style, my general psyche and outlook on life. I was even asking friends who drive minivans what sort of effect it'd had on them. I was worrying way too much about it. I told one person I was afraid it was going to be my first major step into midlife and that I feared there would be no turning back. I was a bit surprised when this person pointed out that perhaps I already had my toes in the water of midlife. I had to sit down and think about it, but in the end, I'm afraid they're right. Let me lay out the evidence for you:

• I have a baby and a mortgage
• I don't remember the last time I ate ramen
• When I go to the movies, I'll choose a Saturday matinée over opening night every time
• I watch more VH1 than MTV
• All the country songs I know the words to are on the "Classic Country" station

I had all this in mind when we went to test drive a minivan. Then the more we drove around, I started to realize that for every reservation I had about the situation, the minivan had an answer. I thought about "classic" county, it had magic stowaway seats. I tried to remember what ramen tastes like, the van had dual power sliding doors. In the end, the van had answers to questions I hadn't even thought of yet. So now we're on the lookout for a good used van. I'm completely over the anxiety of buying a minivan because the thing they don't tell you about getting older is that the only people who think you look "uncool" are the people half your age trying to look cool. So I'm done worrying about how I'll look when the windows are rolled down. It only took one test drive to realize that part of getting older is caring less about whether I look cool and more about what makes my life easier.

If you don't know me by now...

I would make a horrible celebrity. I would be the kind of celebrity who shows up looking fantastic on the red carpet, but doesn't want to go on Oprah or be interviewed by Diane Sawyer or say anything public about my private life. In other words, I would be a very boring celebrity for my throngs of adoring fans. I discovered this about myself when I recently re-started this blog during a rash of blogging by some friends. My friends new blogs are wonderful and insightful and provide a peak into their thoughts and lives. I, on the other hand, blog about babies riding in boxes and speak philosophically about the differences between the menus at McDonald's and Taco Bell. There is nothing wrong with either kind of blog, I've just been stuck by the differences and it's shown me something about myself that I always kind of knew but never really put words to. I rarely let people in on the details of my personal life. I love hearing about other people's lives...their thoughts and hardships and joys...but I'm not liable to ask any more than I think they want to tell me or tell much more than they ask. It isn't that I'm embarrassed about my life or have some big secret I'm hiding, I'm just a "good fences make good neighbors" kind of girl. But even Frost wrote that "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" and maybe he was on to something. Maybe I should be more forthcoming so that the people who know me feel like they actually know me. With that in mind, I'm making two offers. The first is that I'll try to be more forthcoming in general with the people I hold near and dear. The second is this...if there's anything you want to know about me, now's your chance. Any takers?

Vroom Vroom

I used to think that people who worked at liquor stores had access to the best boxes, but now that I’m buying a box of diapers every couple of weeks I’m rethinking that position. I still think a liquor store employee is your best friend if you’re moving anytime soon, but I think that what moms lack in sheer volume of boxes, we make up for with quality. Diaper boxes are the perfect size, they’re made of glossy corrugated cardboard, and , they have cut-outs on the sides for easy portability. I even tested a diaper box this afternoon and learned that it can even double as a baby sled, if necessary.

If I Plant It, Will They Come?

Now that I'm staying home with Emily, I'm always on the lookout for free or low-cost things to keep us busy. Not that Emily doesn't keep me busy enough as it is, but I like to have things that give me goals and routines. Otherwise, E and me just end up in the floor playing with blocks all day. While she may not mind that, I'd rather take the initiative to go to storytime at the library or make a trip to the zoo. My newest idea for a productive activity is to grow some vegetables. The spots in our back yard that get the best sun aren't the spots I wanted to tear up to plant vegetables, so I picked things that could planted in containers. I've got a tomato plant in a 5-gallon bucket, some peas, some carrots, basil, and oregano. I'm not sure if I have a green thumb or not, but I'm two days in and so far nothing has sprouted. I'll keep you posted.