now in stores!

Here's a game to pass around, perhaps a meme of sorts.

Pick a blogger from your blogroll, and then imagine they have an action figure modeled after their likeness available at We-B-Toyz.

What kind of accessories and accoutrements would that blogger's action figure have in the blister pack?

I'll go first, since I thought this thing up, and nobody can pre-empt my pick.

I bring you the Tamara(tm) Action Figure. Comes with bottle of Ruination IPA, paperback novel, and lime-green "iBook" accessories. Clothes include blue jeans, GSG9 boots, Kalashnikitty t-shirt, and black 5.11 tac vest. Optional accessories (sold separately) include Z3 convertible with authentic dent in the hood, and retro-chic 1980s UJM motorcycle. Comes with realistic swilling action!

Your turn.

on naming weapons.

JPG over at Expert Witness has a good piece up on the habit of some folks to name their weapons, and why he doesn't.

I've never given a name to any of my guns, because I've never given a name to any of my hammers or screwdrivers. They're tools, plain and simple. They may be more interesting, more important, and more fun than most of my other tools, but they're still mechanical devices designed for a specific purpose. It bothers me just a little when people name their guns, because it completely plays into the hoplophobe's mindset of the gun as a device with some sort of imbued and independent spirit.

For some reason, I don't mind the naming thing with swords. A sword is both more personal and more unique than a firearm. When the sword reigned supreme as the ultimate personal weapon, no two of them were ever alike, so I guess you could say that a sword has more unique attributes than the firearm. Mass-produced handguns, however customized, don't really strike me as having much of a unique character, however attached their owners may be to them.

In the end, however, even the most unique sword is merely a tool as well, just an inert piece of metal. It's the spirit, skill, and intent of the user that turns a gun or a sword into a weapon. To speak with Robert Heinlein, "there are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men."

(Edit: Naming a gun "Vera", however, is totally cool and awesome.)

keep your village away from my kid.

Over at Roberta X's blog, there's a good piece up on the morality of taking from others to pay for what you can't afford, even if it is your child's life on the line.

Keep your village away from my child, I say.

I love my children more than anything. I'd do anything to save their lives if they were in danger, up to and including giving up my own if necessary. To tell you the honest truth, if one of them was so sick that our own money and all our insurance couldn't pay for a lifesaving treatment, there's a microscopic chance I may even violate my own libertarian ethics and steal to get the money.

But in the highly unlikely event that it ever happens, you can be damn sure I'll have the decency to do the stealing myself, instead of using Uncle Sugar as an intermediary, and then feeling all entitled to the loot. At least I'd run the risk myself.

Theft is theft, even if it's "for the children", and no amount of fancy apologist language about "social contracts" and "fairness" can make it not so.

awwwwwwwwwwwww.

How very cute.

Two of my favorite bloggers have discovered that sometimes good things happen to good people.

Finding the right mate is the best thing there is in life--everything else is just gravy.

Congratulations, you two.

random things.

Today's addition to the blogroll is Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease. (Is that an original name for a blog, or what?) I just spent a bit of time going through her archives, and boy howdy, can she write. I particularly liked this post on Windbag Moore's latest agitprop piece "Sicko".

Speaking of writing: I've had the Neo for a day and a half now. My usual output per day is right around a thousand words. Some days, I only manage to get down a paragraph...but it's a really good paragraph. Other days, I crank out half a chapter. Most days, however, my natural cutoff seems to be right around a thousand words--nothing awfully prolific, but it adds up.

Yesterday, my word count was 2,500, and I can't recall having parked myself at a desk for the specific purpose of writing. I just dashed out all those words in quick spurts of typing during the day, thanks to the fact that I had a lightweight writing machine with practically unlimited battery life handy. Sit on the couch with the kid while he's reading a book and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? There's a paragraph or three. Sitting in the kitchen waiting for the baby's milk to warm up? There's another paragraph. At the end of the day, all those quick little five-minute writing sessions add up.

distressing.

There are many things that change when you have kids. One change you don't expect is that you can never read the news the same way again. Bad things happen to children every day, and such things are reported in the media every day, but as a non-parent, you tend to read them and sort of shrug them off. "That's terrible," you say, and then you go on to the next news item and have a sip of coffee.

When you're a parent, you can't ever read something about a child dying without imagining yourself in the parents' stead, and just the thought of losing one of your own kids is enough to twist your guts. Parents simply aren't meant to outlive their kids, and losing your own offspring is a deeply unnatural occurrence.

Via Crystal, we learn that New York City blogger NYC Watchdog lost his five-year-old son in a drowning accident.

Ambulance Driver shares the story of a call involving the death of a six-month-old baby.

Non-parents read these kinds of things and say, "Gee, that's terrible," and they mean it, but they can't quite comprehend the primal fear that creeps up in a parent's mind when they read the same thing.

If someone were to ask me to summon up the essence of being a parent in one word, I'd reply without hesitation with "worry". Those little bundles come wrapped up in worry, and it stays with you pretty much every moment of every day. It's one of the things you take on in exchange for the smiles and belly laughs, the hugs and the tickle sessions. Nobody in their right mind wants to burden themselves with it, but we do it because we can't un-love our kids. Not worrying about someone means you don't particularly care about them, and in that context it's only natural to worry more about our children than we do about even ourselves.

Despite this, you can't let your worry consume you if you want to stay somewhat sane. All you can do is to take precautions, and then let them toddle off and find their way, and tell yourself they'll be okay.

That's what parenting is: controlled insanity. Those of you who think it's nuts to want to put yourself through such an experience--you're absolutely right. Those of you who take up that burden and wouldn't trade it for anything--you're absolutely right, too.

blogroll time saver.

I've greatly streamlined my daily blogroll check with Google Reader. You subscribe to your favorite blogs by adding their URLs, and it'll list them all on the same sidebar, bolding the ones that have new entries. Now I only need to visit one page to check up on all the new blog entries of the day, rather than having to go to each and every blog individually to check it.

my circle of minions expands.

Today's addition to the blogroll is Ambulance Driver.

I got to his blog via ColtCCO, and I just spent the last half hour reading through his archives. His tales from the EMT front are hilarious, poignant, touching, and packaged in competent prose. If I made a living as a literary agent, I'd strongly encourage him to collect his tales and submit them to me with one-inch margins and line-and-a-half spacing, serif font, so I could pimp them to every relevant publishing house listed in Writer's Market.

Plus, he thinks I'm "erudite". I'll have to check my Big Book of SAT Words, but I think that's a compliment, so he must be a fine and virtuous individual by definition.