Wirelessly Via “wireless”

We have a pretty much working wireless connection — I won’t be surprised if it goes away — from one particular spot in our vacation home base.

More to follow in an update … but for now I’ll step aside because the three others here want to use the connection.

Update, June 29, 2008, 10:48pm:
Later yesterday we found we could connect not only from the second bedroom, as shown in the above picture, but also from the master bedroom. And whereas it seems only one laptop at a time can connect from the second bedroom, here in the master bedroom both laptops can connect simultaneously.

BORDER XINGS

This one is for geo-geeks like myself and son #1.

Home base for the QC family vacation is on a peninsula. The main street runs the length of the peninsula, about half a mile. Coming from the “mainland”, the first 500 feet or so is in Delaware. Then one crosses the state line into Maryland. Our place is in the Maryland portion.

The entrance to the street in Delaware is marked “NO OUTLET”. Get the picture? To go anywhere, practically speaking, we have to cross from Maryland into Delaware. To return, we have to cross back.

So over the course of the vacation, that will add up to a lot of state border crossings. Exciting, huh?

Here we see son #3 straddling the border, with his left foot in Delaware and his right foot in Maryland (and his head in the ozone, but that’s the subject for another post).

Wrath of the Blogging Gods

I ran into this unfortunate fellow on the pier in the vacation community I’m visiting this week and next. Son #2 was with me, and he snapped this picture with his new digital camera.

Bystanders say this poor sap was a vacationing blogger. Evidently he thought taking a vacation also meant a vacation from blogging. Seems the blogging gods didn’t take kindly to his plan. His blog is now resting in peace with its (former) owner.

I’ll take that as a sobering reminder: Don’t anger the blogging gods. Never mind that there isn’t an Internet connection at my home base for this vacation. I’ll still need to find a way to publish a few posts while I’m away.

And I have. This post comes to you from my old friend Ronald’s house. You know, Ronald McDonald. Fortunately, he has a vacation home nearby. I’ll live to blog at least one more day.

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Delightfully Depraved Digital Underground

A’ight, stop whatcha doin’
‘Cause I’m about to ruin
The image and the style that ya used to.

Yeah, that’s about right.

As I pace at vacation’s starting line, what in my wandering mind should appear but Digital Underground’s 1989 rap classic, “The Humpty Dance“.

It’s one of the genre’s best, no doubt. First of all, the fact that it introduces a dance gives it a leg up on the competition. Songs in that category have a great track record. Better yet, the Humpty Hump dance doesn’t require significant skill:

It’s real easy to do. … It’s supposed to look like a fit or a convulsion. … Ya got it down when ya appear to be in pain.

Check out the lyrics now — or wait to play the music video from YouTube embedded below because you’ll have few if any problems understanding the lyrics. They aren’t obscene, not by my (liberal) standards anyway. But they sure as hell are depraved. Delightfully so, in fact. I’ll excerpt some of my favorite turns of phrase in a bit.

DU, from Oakland, had a humorous persona (they disbanded in 1996). “The Humpty Dance” features Humpty Hump, the pickle-nosed alter ego of Shock G, the band’s front man. Humpty, “pronounced with an ‘Umpty’” , has the sex-hungry braggadocio of many rappers. But unlike so many, he doesn’t take himself seriously. Not one bit. And his delivery is comical.

Jeans or Genes?

Not infrequently Mrs. QC and I find ourselves rapidly alternating between topics of conversation. Most of the time we make the switches seamlessly. There are times when it gets tricky, though, particularly when a prop is unexpectedly introduced, as was the case last night.

We were alternating between these topics:

• pictures taken at recent social events
• clean laundry

I had grabbed a pile of jeans I believed to be mine and was about to put them in my pants drawer. The next thing I knew Mrs. QC was showing me this picture of me with my sons …

… and saying “They may not all be yours”.

I did a double take.

I had lost track of the laundry thread, so for a split second I thought she was talking about our sons. When I responded, “Huh?”, she realized what had happened and explained that she was referring to the jeans. Hearty laughter ensued.

For the record, given my sons’ appearance and behavior, there is no doubt in my mind they have my genes.

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Ohio as Icing on Obama’s Victory Cake

No, I’m not calling the 2008 Presidential election now for Senator Barack Obama, my candidate of choice. There’s too much time remaining. Too many things can happen. (And I’m not confident there will even be an election.)

What I’ll do here is point you to Sean’s June 16 post on the FiveThirtyEight.com electoral projections blog titled “538’s Battlegrounds as of Mid-June“, provide a little commentary, and do one of my favorite things — play with numbers.

Here is the short version: Assuming Obama wins all of the states in which he presently leads in the polls, except for Ohio, he would have 297 electoral votes (EVs), 27 more than is needed to win the election.

OK, if you’re game for some arithmetic, stick around. As an enticement I’ll eventually point you to FiveThirtyEight.com’s projection of the outcome of the election in terms of percentages and explain why the current numbers are better than it sounds for “The Big O” and are likely to improve barring unforseen events.

Feline Artwork

Rosie is the older of the two cats living at Chez QC.

She will turn 18 on Father’s Day — the big cat in the sky willing. (In this picture taken by son #2 she looks 118, but I like it — it conveys the essence of her personality.)

She was recently diagnosed with polyps in her right ear canal. The vet advised us to switch from dry food to canned food to lessen the chewing pain Rosie might be experiencing as a result of the polyps.

Since the switch Mrs. QC and I are amazed to see that Rosie has taken up a new hobby: making art from her canned food. She created her first work Saturday. It looks like a bird, don’t you think? Or a bird with a teddy bear attached to its left wing. Or something like that.

To me it’s a bird. What an appropriate choice of subject for a cat.

This morning she created a work in the shape of the United States. Unfortunately, I was in too much of a rush to capture it for posterity before it was consumed — by Rosie — just as “The Bird” had been.

Who knew we had a budding artist for a pet all these years? What a fun surprise!

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Teeing it Up for Hillary

Wow! If Hillary Clinton would follow the advice of Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard (hat tip to DemFromCT at Daily Kos) tomorrow in her campaign suspension announcement, she would get off to an outstanding start in steering her supporters to the Obama camp — which hopefully is her goal. She would hit a grand slam!

The advice given by Sandman and Lanard is in the art of risk communication. DemFromCT:

Risk communication is a skill used in conveying messages about emotion-laden events (some with unfortunate consequences, such as disasters).

Make no mistake, Obama’s clinching of the Democratic nomination is a disaster for many Clinton supporters.

My Long-Legged, Celebrity Colleague From Childhood

One of the children’s TV shows I watched as a child was Happy the Clown weekday mornings on WFIL-TV channel 6 in Philadelphia (image used with permission of Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia).

Despite his name, I don’t remember Happy the Clown (Howard Jones) being that happy. For me he didn’t have the cachet of the other local children’s hosts I watched — Gene London (WCAU-TV channel 10), Sally Starr (WFIL-TV) and Pixanne (Jane Norman, WCAU-TV).

• London was a very talented, charismatic storyteller and artist.
• Starr introduced me to one of my all-time favorites, the Three Stooges (although the only Stooges short I recall her running is the one in which they are on a train in a sleeper car — Moe: “Wake up and go to sleep!” — and accidentally let loose an old, decrepit lion).
• Pixanne — Norman, that is — lived during her show’s run in the same apartment building in the Germantown section of Philadelphia as my maternal grandparents.