Do Robot Babies Poo Electric Sheep?

How interesting is this? Apparently Japan has one of the fastest aging populations (I assume that means more people growing older each year and not people growing older at an accelerated rate) and also one of the lowest birth rates in the world. And this robot baby is designed to be similar enough to a real baby to jump start women’s biological clocks to try and offset that population crisis.

Nice try, Japan. But first of all, look at it. It looks like it has a glandular problem. Look at that head! Like a character from Hey Arnold! If I were a prospective parent and I saw a baby with a head that size, I think my biological clock would stop. My birth canal would literally seize up at the sight of that planet sized head.

Secondly, this baby cries. It gets a runny nose. You ever see a runny-nosed crying baby? Not effective advertising for procreation. The only thing that would make this worse is if it woke you up at night with a poopy diaper. (It doesn’t get poopy diapers, right?) I actually think this would be a more effective birth control demonstration for middle and high schoolers.

But lastly, if I—the would-be parent—get myself a robot baby, one that doesn’t eat or poo or have to wear the latest trendy clothes or be shunned by the other babies, one that requires virtually no responsibility or commitment from me, one that supposedly does all the stuff a real baby does… Will that really prompt me to have a child? Or are my needs already met?


That’s assuming, of course, we’re not talking about my kids, R & M. (Kids, come on! You’ve been warned not to read Mommy’s blog!)

Keanu Reeves, Ticklish Tigers, and Touchdown Jesus

Sometimes I just can't wait until I get home so I can tell you about my day. But you know, it's not always about me. Sometimes, I have to put aside my own needs and bitchiness observations and serve the public. So now, a public service announcement:

Keanu Reeves is depressed. He was photographed recently sitting on a park bench, head down, apparently lost in some very dark thoughts. That photo has prompted a FaceBook and YouTube campaign to Cheer Up Keanu.

Now I don’t think you’ve heard me talk about Keanu here, but I am a fan. (Except for the Matrix movies. WTF, Keanu?) So how can I sit idly by while Keanu is sad? The answer is, I can’t.

And neither can tons of other fans. They’ve Photoshopped pictures of Keanu with kittens, with Forest Gump, with the cast of Lost, etc. And though my Photoshop skills are not awesome I think I have one more way to cheer up Keanu…

Let’s get him Kinectimals for his Xbox 360! Check this out. Microsoft’s new game allows you to interact with (pet, play with, tickle) these “kinectimals,” the way you would interact with a real animal. Except, you probably wouldn’t let a real tiger lick your face. I once let a Siberian tiger lick my ankle, though. (I didn’t really let him. If a tiger wants to lick you, you just go with it, you know.) It’s not a pleasurable experience. Know how a cat’s tongue feels? Like that… times a hundred.

But still, I think just being able to pet the tiger and call it to you would be fun. I think Keanu would have fun with it. The game isn’t released until November, though. Hold on, Keanu!

Another crazy thing that happened this week was the burning of Touchdown Jesus. (Or, as I have always heard him called, Big Butter Jesus.) Backstory for those of you not in the Midwest: There’s a church on the road between Cleveland and Columbus (where I was licked by a tiger, by the way) that has had a ginormous Jesus coming out of a lake at the front of the church. You could see it from the highway. Scary.


Apparently, it was struck by lightning last night. Now this thing is stryofoam over a metal frame, and covered with fiberglass. So you know this thing burned and smoked like a … giant smoking, burning Jesus, I guess.

Maybe I’m seventeen different kinds of twisted, but my childhood Baptist indoctrination makes that both a frightening and intriguing mental image in my mind.

On Books And Covers

I was cruising Ravelry the other day, just because I was a little restless, had some time to kill, and hadn't spent an hour just looking at knitting in a while. And I was looking at some stuff people had done for gifts, and stuff that took only one skein, and stuff that took only half a skein. And I saw this.

Patwoman: Wow. I really liked that! And the pattern is in a book I actually own. Hey, wait a tick. I don't remember that pattern. And what? It says the pattern is on the front cover? No way. No way that is on the front cover and I missed it.


So I go and get the book and look at it. And it is on the front cover. But it's pink and purple. So I do remember looking at it.

Patwoman: Meh.

What a difference the color makes! I promptly went out and got a skein of Paton Grace in Natural. It's cotton, but for some reason it doesn't bother me the way other cotton does. And then I whipped out my container of seed beads and started stringing some champagne-colored beads. Honestly, stringing the beads on took about as long as knitting.


This took very little time to knit. Even with stringing the beads, I was done in the time it took to watch two episodes of Fringe from first season. (M is catching up.) Beautiful! M immediately claimed it.

So now I'm thinking, I've got some LB Microspun in Black somewhere, I'm pretty sure of it...

I Don’t Like Geese

…but they don’t deserve to die. It really bothers me that people think nothing about hitting an animal in their car. I avoid hitting animals when I can do it without endangering human life. I mean, I wouldn’t crash my car into a ditch to avoid a squirrel or I wouldn’t cross the center line and hit someone else or drive someone else off the road. But I would swerve to miss the animal if I could.

Yesterday, on the way to work, there were two geese crossing the road. It’s a stretch of road next to an apartment complex where there is a retention pond (and so, geese). Geese are always along that road. They have nests and baby geese and all that stuff every young goose dreams of when she is just a gosling. And these two geese were crossing the road yesterday morning on foot. I swerved to easily avoid them, just like most of the other cars.

Let me stop here and assure you, in case there is any doubt, I am not saying geese are the paragon of the animal kingdom, okay? They are stupid. How many times have you seen a goose make a nest in the worst place possible? The parking lot of the movie theatre? The drainage ditch along a busy road? The tree lawn at the mall? It’s like they just go “Oh, honk. I’m tired. This is as good a place as any for a nest.”

Geese are mean. Maybe not all geese, but certainly every goose that I’ve ever come across. “Here’s some bread, Goosey.” And it’s “Honk. I’ll kill you! But leave the bread, okay?” And apparently, they can snap that bill pretty hard—although I wouldn’t know, because I don’t approach animals that warn me off with death threats. I just kinda drop the bread and run.

And geese are dirty. Oh yes. Don’t even argue with me here. Most animals will drop poo discretely. They want to make sure a predator doesn’t find them or they just don’t want poo near their food or their young. But geese (and most birds) drop poo wherever they happen to be. When they are flying. Where they are standing. When they are walking. While they are eating. Take a walk around that retention pond at the apartment complex and you will see what I mean.

So, it’s not that I like geese. I just think, when a person sees geese crossing the road, they should not speed up in order to hit both of them in one go. That’s sick. If that is okay with a person, what else is okay?

Think about that.

Bamboo Bag

Ha! I actually lined and seamed this puppy! Remember I knitted it back in February and it's just been sitting there, waiting to become a purse? And I'm really happy with the way it turned out! This is the Bamboo Bag from Creative Knitting Fall 2009. I used two skeins of Vanna's Choice in Dusty Green. I thought it would be really cool to knit this out of actual bamboo yarn, so I swatched that out at first. But alas, it just didn't look right and so I moved to the VC, which turned out to be a perfect choice.

I spent about an hour tonight lining the purse, with some help from GabGab. This made me appreciate why felted purses are so nice. No lining. But Gabby and I stuck with it and finished pretty quickly.

The fabric was a nice find from the remnant bin at Joann's. It has a bunch of jungle animals (with the exception of the racoons... what jungle are racoons from?) all over it and I thought it would be perfect for this bag--even though there are no pandas on it. I thought it must meant for children or something. But then I started noticing the pictures on the fabric a little more. And OMG! Look what those animals are doing! I mean, really! Those tigers are obscene!

But maybe that's I like them so much.

Tuesday Is The New Monday

Not that I’m not happy with a three day weekend, mind you. I could do with more of those. That’s actually the only thing I really liked about my old job (bank)—the excessive number of three day weekends. Seriously, if you don’t like to work hard, go into banking. There’s a three day weekend every month. Plus, if you are any kind of VP (And they all are. Banks have more VPs than regular employees.) or if you are HR (like I was), you can basically come in late, leave early, and take a long lunch most days.

Bankers also play golf network a lot, which I didn’t do. On the list of Patwoman’s Favorite Things To Do, golf falls somewhere between Getting My Eyebrows Waxed and Solving Algebraic Equations. (Although you would think a game where hitting things counted would appeal to me. Go figure.) Bankers also drink a lot of alcohol, even during the workday network a lot, which I didn’t do. I also didn’t see much evidence of a sense of humor during my tenure. So I guess you can see why I left.

It’s a sharp contrast to this job, where I am working all day. But, at least here there are some people who get my jokes, or will at least laugh to humor me.

At any rate, I did enjoy the long weekend. It was strange because T and I have now completed the book manuscript and this was the first weekend I didn’t spend writing until my eyes bled. I actually had to stop and think “What did I do before? When I had free time?” (Free time exists! It is not a myth!)

Of course, the answer is, I kept up with the laundry and the dishes and didn’t let the house fall into a state of clutter that would batter your sensibilities. And yeah, I did do a little of that. But only enough to keep us off of “Buried Alive.”

Nope. I’m not entirely sure what I did (In that where-did-the-time-go way, not in the how-much-did-I-drink way.) but it was nice to have time to do it. Knitted a little. Read a little. Bought some plants for the garden. Nice.

And I am sorely wishing for another three day weekend.