Hey all...

Hopefully that title made it through the spam filters.

Mr. Sean Eamon MacLachlan was born this morning at 0817 PST.

He weighs in at 7 lbs 10 oz (3.46 kg). Mom and baby are doing very well, although Mom is still pretty groggy.

Unfortunately his Dad has already failed him as Dad didn't bring the right cable to get the pictures out of the camera, so pictures are going to have to wait a little longer. Luckily everybody assures us that he's a cute kid and it's not just our parental biases showing through ;-)

Cheers,
Dave

Labels: WTF

_MG_2639.jpg, originally uploaded by uncle_shoggoth.

You should go check out Chris's blog - he took a couple really good macro shots of the small Irises that are outside and blooming right now.

I can't wait for the rest of the buds that I see forming all over the yard to bloom as well!

WASHINGTON, D.C.--It turns out that the federal government's Intellipedia, a classified Wikipedia just for spies and spooks, is as prone to altercations as is its public counterpart.

The latest edit war on the top-secret Web site started with the "Best Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode" entry, which CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed would be the acclaimed episode in which a series of human heart-gathering demons cast a spell to steal everyone's voices.

Then, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Vice President Dick Cheney reverted the classified Intellipedia entry to the earlier version that listed the Buffy musical "Once More, With Feeling" as the top choice. "The juxtaposition of Buffy's emotional dependence on her mentor and the interpretive dance number was deeply moving," Cheney said. "Plus there was some serious blood and gore toward the end." [more]

To provide you with a little context, I ought to say that Margret bought something capable of receiving television signals recently. Now, to thwart TV licence dodgers-- the word 'dodgers' is always used for these kinds of people - tax dodgers, fine dodgers, etc. I think the idea is to allow a rascally element, so as to keep 'dodgers' separate from those who fiddle social security, say, or sickness benefits (who are, as we all know, 'cheats'). These days, when you buy a television, digibox, or anything capable of picking up a TV signal, you have to give the shop your name and address so that the Department of Making Sure You Have a TV Licence - whose Speer-designed offices occupy three city blocks in Lancaster - can check you against the central list of Licence Owners. OK, so Margret bought this thing and, a short time later (because she isn't on the central list), received a computer-generated letter telling her to report to Investigation Point Alpha for Re-education or something.

There was a phone number - not Freephone; a pay number - on the letter. You were told to call this number if you'd now got a licence, actually had no signal-receiving equipment, etc. You should telephone and (as you were charged for the call) Explain Yourself, perhaps through ashamed, terrified sobs. The reason she got this letter, obviously, is because I pay for the TV licence at our address, so my name is on the central list, not hers.

Margret, being German, lurched with alarm and told me to phone the number and speak to an official immediately while she hurried off to find her papers and put on a more formal pair of shoes.

Mil, being English, threw the letter in the bin.

Some time passes. Another letter arrives, addressed to Margret. She opens it, skims her eyes across its contents in the swiftest possible fashion, and then stamps into the room where I'm sitting minding my own business. Glaring, she holds the letter up, smacks the paper with the back of her hand like an am-dram actor given any written document whatsoever in a Shakespeare production, and growls:
"I'm going to be arrested because of you."

I experience what I believe are called 'conflicting emotions'.

"What?" I say. "What are you talking about?"

"I told you to call and explain about the TV licence," she replies. "But you just said to ignore it, and now I've got a letter from the police."

Well - that's a bit of a surprise, eh? I had, I have to admit, been puzzled by the fastidiousness of the TV licence thing for some time. I mean, it seems out of place. In Britain we don't have to carry any identifying documents whatsoever - not even a driving licence when we're driving. Plus no national database works properly: that's part of what it means to be British - the stumbling, error-ridden, conflicting chaos of the Inland Revenue's claim system is as much a part of the country's fibre as Magna Carta. That being the case, to begin the move to a more Stasi-based model by joining the dots between our purchases and our legal requirement to have a TV licence seemed a really odd decision. If they were going to do it at all, why not start more sensibly by, for example, keeping a register of people who buy books on reflexology and putting them on some sort of mental health watch-list? However, even I had not thought that if you bought something that could receive a television signal and, not being on the Licence Owners' list, didn't call them and Explain Yourself, that you would be arrested. Therefore, on the limited data I had available, I'm embarrassed to say that I assumed Margret was talking rubbish. Vastly over-dramatic rubbish, let's say.

I took the letter from her and read it.

She was talking rubbish.

It was from the police, but it didn't say she was about to be arrested. And it wasn't - a detail - anything whatsoever to do with the TV licence either.

"This is a speeding fine," I say.

"A speeding fine?"

"Yes. I don't claim any special legal knowledge, but I think it's clear that this is a speeding fine if you look at the letter" - I point to the letter - "and read the words that are on it."

Margret grabs it back and pores over the text for a time.

"A Saturday," she muses. "In the morning. Near Cosford… Which of us was driving?"

(Yes, dear reader - who could it be?)

"It was you," I say.

"How do you know?"

"Are you serious? Of course it was you. Tss… Just conjure up a mental image of you driving the car, and then one of me driving it. Which image has speed blur?"

She shifts her weight from foot to foot. "It's not absolutely definite it was me," she says, very, very unconvincingly indeed.

So, we sit down and work out some dates and facts. It turns out that Margret was driving.

The penalty is £60 and three points on your licence. Margret immediately takes out her cheque book and sends off the payment: to any members of the judicial system reading this, I want to assure you that's exactly what happened next. No consideration was even given to any other course of action and certainly not any fraudulent ones.

Hypothetically, though - merely to pass the time in this Mail; harmlessly chatting as I am with friends possessing no legal powers at all - let's just suppose we arrived at the same destination via the scenic route. Just, as I say, as an inadmissible-in-court bit of fun.

In this fantasy, Margret has me check on the Net for details of the penalty while she deals with the form that came with the letter. There's a big list of all kinds of different offences on a government webpage. (One of which, I discover, is 'Furious Driving'. If this is against the law, then I reckon it'd be pointless to give Margret a spot fine for it: it'd be better if she just called her bank right now and arranged a direct debit.) It also tells you such things as how long the points stay on your licence, and how many you're allowed on there before they take it off you and set fire to it.

Margret's manner becomes casual and easy-going. This is quite impossibly conspicuous and disconcerting; it's like a velociraptor suddenly sitting down and starting to ice flowers onto a cake. "Hmmm," she hmmms - casual; easy-going. "We could say that you were driving."

Did you catch that 'we'? Side-by-side, you see - a togetherness as unassailable as a subjective personal pronoun. Is there anything more joyful and nurturing than feeling part of a couple, ladies and gentlemen?

She continues. "It wouldn't really matter if you had the points on your licence." I don't know whether she imagines this being demonstrated by a second, unspoken sentence. Let alone whether that sentence would be, "Because you don't use my car much; you use your bicycle," or, "Because it's not like you're ever going to need a vehicle for some identifiable kind of a career, is it?" or, "Because you'll probably be dead soon anyway."

"Whatever," I say. Just like that - as though it wasn't at all a massively heroic thing. "Whatever." Think Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities. Think Bruce Willis at the end of Armageddon. If you're a woman, and if you'd been there, you would have swooned. I'm not kidding: you would have pigging swooned.

However, though on the one side you have my unshowily offered sacrifice - undoubtedly one of the most noble and manly and, yes, alluring acts conceivable - on the other side we have the point that she's already filled in the form. Tipp-Exing out her name in several places and replacing it with mine is not only pretty tedious, but it's also not really an undetectable criminal deception worthy of Moriarty, 'The Napoleon of Crime', is it? So, seething, she piles everything into the return envelope; resigned now to taking the rap.

Though she does add, "But we will put your name next time."

"Or you could try just not speeding again," I suggest. I feel stupid as soon as the words have left my mouth.

Margret, tutting, leaves the room and goes into the kitchen to spend some time banging crockery and utensils down heavily onto surfaces. I return to working out the chords for Wonderwall.

I have still not telephoned about the TV licence.

Mil.