Predator Reboot in the Works!

Supposedly the Predator movie franchise is gonna get a reboot. I thought I'd toss my hat into the ring:

What if, instead of grizzled old veterans, they were all young, fresh out of the academy. And all male is boring, have at least one squad member be a hot female lead (it will help if it's obvious that she's never seen a gun before, much less fired one). And the commander is in love with her but is unsure about all the killing. He would like to retire to mexico and fix cars or something. And one of them is a scientist, not even a commando and he hates war too so he's always trying to get them to not kill the predator. 

And the predator isn't an alien, it's an angry indigenous person trying to save the rainforest from evil american imperialism. Because the commandos are going to blow up his home village to make way for an oil pipeline and he needs to race home to cure his sick wife with a special flower that grows in the amazon and the wife also just gave birth. And they're trapped in a pit and it's raining. Raining poisonous frogs. genetically engineered poisonous frogs.

And the climax is fought in a big cave, where the Predator (it's his title given to him by the wise and blind village elder) smears mud on himself to disguise himself from the commando's night vision technology (technology bad, traditional good) and he uses the venom from giant spiders (that he fought and killed in act II) to defeat the commandos. But at the end, the commandos are actually winning, when commander and hot commando have a crisis of faith and turn on their comrades (evil) and save the predator. 

The film can end with the predator saving his sick wife and new born baby, (with the wife being hawt now) she holds the baby while he holds her and she looks up and smiles and they both look up into the blue sky and then we pan down from the blue sky to a beach house in mexico, a trendy CW band playing on a radio, commander is now AWOL and fixing cars (yes, on the beach) then some beautiful legs appear in front of the camera walking towards commander, shot of beautiful swaying ass, oh look, it's the hot commando she ran away with him! 

the end.

The Joys of Taking The BART

We spent the day in San Francisco's Chinatown enjoying the flower street fair for the upcoming Lunar New Year celebration. We hung out with our friends and their 2 year old baby ate some food, took some pictures and generally had a great time. We called it a night around 6:30pm and by 7:00 pm, the Wife, the Baby and I were on the Fremont bound BART train. What follows is an actual conversation transcribed to the best of my memory:

White Female (WF): ...well, I had to take about 7 years off from work because my daughter had  a nervous breakdown.

Black Male (BM): What? How old is your daughter that she's so emotional?

WF: She was raped.

BM: Like a date rape?

WF: No.

BM: Like a real rape?

WF: The police called it a rape of oppertunity.

BM: And she's not over it yet? Did you try therapy?

WF: Yes, she's in therapy now but these things take time, anyways my husband is out of work and I'm looking for a job now so we can make the house payments.

BM: ...(unintelligble)... sending all our jobs... ...Americans are STUPID!

WF: Have you ever been to Mexico? There are people starving down there!

BM: That's not our fault! NAFTA is stupid they're taking all our money!

WF: No honey, that's the War, that's what's bleeding us dry.

BM: Have you ever heard of 9/11?

WF: No, that has nothing to do with it, this is Bush's war, he's the one who got us into this mess.

WF: Honey, we don't know what real hunger is here, we've never been hungry.

BM: So? First they sent our auto jobs to Japan and now NAFTA is taking the rest of our jobs! 

WF: Well, I know lots of Spanish people and they're good people.

BM: So? Why do we have to take care of them? What about Canada? What about Japan? They have all our money, why can't they take care of the Mexicans? Why we always gotta take care of everybody? They're just sending all our money back home, soon, there won't be an America left!

WF: I want to work too, I just don't think I have more of a right to work than other people...

BM: Let them work in their own country! Look, Mexicans send their money to Mexico, Asians just buy Japanese cars, shop in Chinese stores and send their money home. Sending all our money overseas! Ain't gonna be an America at this rate! Ain't gonna be an America!

WF: Well, do YOU wanna pick apricots and strawberries and grapes? Those people work jobs we don't wanna do! I mean, I have a strong will but even I wouldn't want to work out there all day for minimum wage!

BM: Now wait a minute, wouldn't be no minimum wage if it weren't for those Mexicans taking the jobs from Americans.

WF: No! Americans don't want those jobs!

BM: Well, I wasn't talking about labour anyways, I was talking about real jobs like construction. But those Mexicans are lazy. I work in construction and we hired a bunch of Mexicans, they work for maybe 4 hours and stand around and waste time for the rest of the day, they're lazy. Like in Hayward, there was some freeway project they gave to some MEXICAN company took them six months, should have only taken one month but those Mexicans...

WF: I don't believe that. I've worked with Mexicans, they work hard.

BM: They're good for slave labor like picking fruit but not for real work. They don't do 

quality job like REAL Americans! If you want something built right you need an American!

WF: I really wish you hadn't said that...

BM: SLAVE LABOR! It's all they're good for!

WF: ...

At this point the conversation ended and the White Lady got off at the nearst stop, as she left she called out to him, "Well, hopefully Change is Coming!" and left. The Black Man put on some Sony headphones and was quiet for the rest of the trip to Fremont. 

Unexpected Impacts In The Life of a Two Year Old of Having Unemployed Parents

We're well into our first official week of my wife's unemployment. So far so good, we took a day trip out to a local regional park, went walking along one of its scenic yet child friendly trails and discovered that our kid doesn't like to walk about halfway through the trail. This made the remaining half of the walk a sort of mind game between us. He would pout and demand to be hugged which is code for "carry me to the car now!" and we would pretend we were in a race or try to bribe him with mango juice. At the end of the trip we resolved to take him out walking more to break those legs in but so far we've sat around at home. 

His refusal to walk uphill or along trails came as a genuine shock to me as he actually loves climbing up stairs and escolators, or as he calls them, "lello-latows". But then again, I should have figured that his love wasn't for the walking or the exhilaration of defeating a challenging set of staircases.... no, for him the exhilaration came from machine itself. The endless row of little metal teeth that magically transformed itself into steps, that danger at the end when the teeth magically reappear and try to grab at your toes.

Now that I think about it, there's a near endless list of things mechanical and man made that he loves. For starters, wheels. He loves wheels. He touches them endlessly and points them out with the sort of glee that usually only prospectors who have found the motherload can muster. He loves things things attached to wheels, wagons, cars, the lazy susan in the cupboard that now lives in the closet because we had to hide it from him he loves it so much.  He loves elevators which share the same name with escolators which sometimes lead to bitter anguished tears when the elevator is placed close to the escalator and I can't figure out which he is demanding to ride on and usually ends up with us going up one, down the other and up again. He loves airplanes and trains, little yellow bulldozers and turning the light switch on and off as he shows his mastery over our little electron slaves.

But he does have a nemesis in the mechanical world. Electric motors. The type found in vacuum cleaners. Their angry high pitched whine drives him to heights of terror and panic. His fear and dread are very real to him and the mere act of taking out the vacuum cleaner has him running to his room in anxious aversion. In the past he would stand there in stark terror, eyes filled with tears as I vacuumed the remains of the cheerios that failed to meet their end in his devouring maw but now he runs. And to him, it must seem like I'm chasing him with it as I methodically work from room to room. He runs to find refuge only to find the vacuum cleaner whiring its way down the hall slowly towards him, back and forth, back and forth, closer and closer the glowing lamp at the front of its head like some evil glowing eye. Our son has come to name his terror, it's the green dinosaur and it lives in our hallway closet. He tells us stories about his nemesis, "Green dinosaur eat Ainan!" he'll tell us at night if he's in particular need of reassurance. 

Not because I was lazy and more keen on watching the television but out of love did I abstain from vacuuming. Rarely did the green dinosaur emerge from his den, instead the little hand vacuum had to make due cleaning up the little crumbs, random cheerios and the other debris and detritus that a two year old produces as he eats. No more though, with my wife home to act as a shield and guardian, a hand maiden (well, not anymore) of virtue to protect our son the vacuum cleaner is out in force. My heart sings with joy as I hear it weasle out little bits of dirt from the carpet, the crunch crunch of little bits of dried cereal being worked out of the nylon forest and into the HEPA sealed plastic depository of dust and debris. Cheerfully I watch as it marks its progress in the closet the whine of the motor masking out the cries of a frantic two year old as he runs from room to room screaming in terror, the Wife chasing after him trying to reassure that which cannot be assured. 

When the chore is done, my son stands over me as I coil up the power cord. Insisting upon seeing his mortal enemy put away properly, sealed into its den once more. 

My Baby The Ninja Shower Thief

I get a hair cut once every season or so. I'm lazy like and since I have such little experience with hair cuts I usually get a rather bad one so it takes a while for it to grow out and for me to get over the demoralizing traumatization of walking around looking likeI was on the losing end of a fight with a weed wacker. So it's a vicious cycle, I fear hair cuts so I don't go which leads to poor decisions when I'm there which just re-affirms my deeply held belief that people who cut hair, hate people and me in particular. 

Before in the crazy bubble economy days of two weeks ago, I would have splurged the extra three dollars and gone for the hair wash and style after the cut but since we're poor now I decided I could probably handle the hair washing part on my own, paid the bill and with the baby in tow went home to take a shower.

Now, the water heater in our apartment is a tempermental beast and I usually run it for a minute or two to figure out if it's going to be hot enough to shower in. Sometime during this time Aidan had decided that he would like to shower instead. Aidan doesn't shower, he takes baths and by baths I mean he sits in the tub and plays with his Thomas the Train bath toys and sings the Thomas the Train song to himself over and over at the top of his lungs until he prunes up enough to scare himself. At which point he starts to yell, "Honey! Done NOW DONE NOW DONE NOW!" 

This is the point where I ask him, "You're done now?" and he'll respond all nonchalant, "Okay, I'm done now" and show me his wrinkled fingertips, "Winkley!" Since we're having family over for the weekend, I decide I'll take this oppertunity to wash his hair. We both try to avoid this as much as possible since the hysterical shrieks and water splashing followed by the crying and demands for hugs by the wet soapy baby are a bit much for me and he doesn't like to be clean. No, that's a lie, he loves to be clean, he's fastidious about washing his face and hands but not his hair. He's like Sampson, no one touches his hair. 

Undaunted by his furious howls of protest and not in a small way fueled by my irritation by having my shower denied, I set to work massaging the shampoo into his hair at which point he yelled out, "Ouch! Honey, you're broken me!" More crying and tearful accusations of broken him and ensue and eventually he's clean, I'm soaked and now there's no more hot water. 

Inappropriate Baby

As the baby gets older I'm finding the Wife and I have to be ever more discreet with what we say around him. He's recently taken to lifting up his shirt, pointing at his nipples and proudly announcing, "Boobies!" with a big grin on his face. 

In public he came up with this new gem, "Papa-ish! Don't kill me!" at which point he shrieked and ran away from me. Hilarious until the people at Target stared at us. Makes me long for the good old days when he would just yell after me, "Honey! Be right back!". 

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Like most kids his age, our 2 1/2 year old son hates vegetables. There's a few he likes, such as potatoes, but only after they've been frenched and then deep fried in oil, sprinkled with salt and served in a paper container of some sort, preferably from In & Out. Baking or mashing the potatoes seems to be some sort of abomination to him and he refuses them with nearly the same intensity as when we try to brush his teeth. 

Being good parents concerned with providing a healthy diet to our one and only precious we've worked tirelessly and diligently to work the green stuff into his diet. We found we can sneak some veggies in if we chop them up finely and mix them in with his normal food and we've been able to do this pretty successfuly with blanched spinach but he's caught on. It's at the point were there is a clear inverse relationship: the more vegetables we try to get him to eat, the less he eats. He'll declare, "All done!" and then hop off the chair and run off to engineer another great train crash involving his Thomas the Train and whatever other poor hapless toy that happens to be laying around.

This is followed 30 mins later with the sort of mind numbing repetitious pleas for food that only a 2 year old can manage. It usually begins with him standing in the kitchen, eyeing the hawaiian (whole grain) bread dinner rolls and then whimpering. The whimpering, if ignored will turn into out right pleading, little hands outstretched, fingers opening and grasping the air, "mine bread! mine!". The Wife and I still ignoring him, she off in a room furiously updating her resume and tracking down job leads and I, bundled up in a blanket trying to enjoy the Lakers game. Go Lakers!

By now, the Wife has closed the door and I've turned up the volume to drown out the sorrowful pleading bleats, "Mine bread NOW! Bread, Bread, Bread, Bread nooooOOOOoooow!" Our son fully fails to grasp our exasperated sighs as signals of our displeasure, or maybe he does and doesn't care. In any case, the wailing is a sign that the tear gates are about to be unleashed and big salty tears soon well up from his eyes and roll down his cheeks all the while he continues his mantra, "Mine bread now" but now they're interrupted by sniffling sobs. It's around this point where I break down and give him his bread, "Okay... papa gets you bread." but now he demands a hug as well. I'm sure as he's latched on to me like a little koala bear munching on his nutrionally void dinner roll that he's grinning to himself for yet another succesful manipulation of dear old dad.

This is all to say that one day, yesterday, we discovered that our son, the champion of vegetable rights, LOVES broccoli. Only, we call them "little tree" and he gobbles them down with a sort of rascalion glee. His eyes light up and shoves them in his mouth and chomps away. I think he imagines himself some great lumbering dinosaur having his way with trees, certainly when he declares, "Ainan eat tree!" I have cause to smile. 

Cutting Costs

The realities of our unemployment are slowly sinking in for us. I went through this when the dotcom bubble burst but this is the first time the Wife has been out of work, at least against her will. Her severance package was generous compared to some so we have a few months before we start cutting into our savings and start the slowly decent into financial destitution and ruin. 

All our doom and gloom hasn't stopped us from eating out, however. Yesterday, lunch consisted of tasty organic sodas, some organic chicken soup, sandwiches with chips and some turkey sausages on the side. Afterwards we split a danish for desert. I know, we should be budgeting and we should be cutting such obvious costs like eating out... but when CostCo features such fine dining nearly everyday for the incredible cost of free, well, it's easy to forget we're poor. 

An Unemployed Family

My wife was laid off today. I've been unemployed for a while now taking care of our 2 year old kid. 

We've been expecting this for a while now and we've been trying to save money but I went and canceled our cable TV and phone service this morning right after I found out. 

I felt kinda empowered as I unplugged our faithful cable set top box that had so duitfully recorded hours of House and Battlestar Galactica without complaint. The amber display acted as the only clock in our living room and it blinked off for the last time as I unceremoniously unplugged the cord and shoved the entire mess into a a grocery bag for delivery at our local cable office. 

But as I sit here in our darkened living room I find I'm missing that amber clock and the faint hum of the hard disk drive as it would record our shows. I know that it's probably already on a truck or already installed in someone else's living room... telling the time for that someone else, recording that someone else's favorite shows. I hope they're happy together. 

I'll miss you set top box.