the extraterrestrials are not coming

My husband has had a friend for a number of years, who is now also my friend, too. He is very into the paranormal and fringe pseudo-science. He's not a conspiracy buff, but he does believe in all sorts of supernatural realms and the like.

He came over for dinner recently and was talking about aliens, one of his favorite topics. He claims to have seen extraterrestrial craft here in the Outback, as have many people in Australia.

His current thesis holds that significant extraterrestrial visits are imminent, on the scale of Columbus discovering the New World, to use his metaphor. He is convinced that, within a few years, aliens will visit our planet and establish diplomatic relations of sorts, a la The Day the Earth Stood Still. As to what evidence he has that this will happen, all he can offer is along the lines of "I feel it in my gut."

I believe life exists on other planets. The probability that it doesn't is too small, considering the countless billions of stars out there. But I really don't believe aliens visit our planet secretly and refuse to make contact, or do so on a very limited basis through alien abductions.

I told our friend I think the chances that we'll be visited by intelligent alien life in our own lifetimes is close to zero. Recorded history stretches back close to 10,000 years, so why would extraterrestrials have any special reason to visit us now?

Of the innumerable planets out there with some kind of life form, how many of them have any species evolved more than microbes and lichen? How many have sentient creatures? And creatures that have some sort of communication system, like apes and dolphins? Now how many have species that are actually civilized, let alone to such a degree that they have recorded history and some kind of technology?

You can see where this is going. While there almost certainly is life, how many planets have life more advanced than ours? Sure, there are probably some, even those who can travel faster than the speed of light.

But why would they bother coming here? We're in a fairly remote part of the universe among sparsely situated stars, compared to other quadrants.

I think the chances of intelligent aliens visiting our planet are about the same as an extremely famous Earthling just deciding, out of the blue, to visit to a small town with a population under 100 in some remote corner of the globe. Yes, it could happen, but don't hold your breath waiting.

sniffle-inducing

I am a sucker for people who show kindness to small animals and children. This is actually a commercial for a camera, but the selling is very subtle.

what's the story?

When I see photos like this, I always want to know how they happened. This is appearing on a commercially "amateur" site, but that's not the originator, given I've found lower res copies of this same image without the commercial watermark.

Was she a "working girl" the two other guys hired? Or are they true swingers? If so, then why are their faces obscured but not hers? Is this a cuckold situation, where the husband got off on being humiliated and having to photograph his wife with her two lovers?

The men appear to be in good physical shape, so they could be in the military, but that in itself doesn't tell me anything about the origins of this or what was really happening.

I want to know the story here, but given this is the internet, I can find 1,000 other places where this is posted but nothing about the photo itself.

intriguing but annoying

This picture intrigues me because it's such a quintessential moment: a guy is skateboarding on a jammed freeway during rush hour. As you hear people say frequently in the City of Angeles: "Only in LA."

At the same time, it annoys me. The guy who did this was in his forties and had friends deliberately stop traffic in every lane so he could pull off this stunt. He's the marketing director for some skateboard company. So he's hardly some kid; he should know better.

He did this on the 405 Freeway during rush hour in 2008. He also appears to have done this somewhere near where another freeway intersects the 405, possibly the Santa Monica Freeway, always a heavy traffic and high accident location.

How many people did he inconvenience because of this narcissistic stunt? Did someone miss a job interview or a critical appointment? Did it cause any fender-benders, a common occurrence on LA freeways? How much did he cost everyone else with this bullshit? I sincerely hope he was stopped by police and cited.

But I still like the picture. It reminds me of the LA I miss in a strange way.

too busy to proofread

Submitted for your disapproval. He'll spend his entire life advertising he was a child who somehow was left behind during that whole "no child left behind" thing.

I'm a terrible speller. But at least I make an effort to always proofread and double-check even when I'm fairly certain I'm correct. And then there's always spell check.

Now the tattoo artist is either an idiot or somebody with a real mean streak. That took many minutes to misspell that word carefully as the letters were slowly formed.

chilling yet heartwarming

This is both a frightening and uplifting news piece about a four-year-old boy who stood up to the terrorists during the recent Nairobi attack, even after he witnessed his mother being shot (thankfully, she survived and is doing fine).

I can't believe the gall of one of the attackers who told the tot: "we are not monsters." I'd like to have a go at his gonads with a nail gun.

It's amazing how fiercely brave children can be at times. My husband has a relative who, as a young boy barely out of diapers, stood up to a group of older teenagers who were picking on his disabled brother.

I imagine some of this is because they don't yet understand how dangerous a situation might be. But I also believe they have an inate courage that trumps their fear. They may be afraid of monsters in the closet, but they're not afraid to stand up to true evil.

life is hard

A 66-year-old Columbian farmer's penis was amputated a few days ago after he took too much Viagra and suffered an erection lasting several days which could not subside. His organ was showing signs of gangrene, among other issues, and doctors felt they had no choice other than this extreme solution.

The farmer had originally taken the Viagra in hopes of impressing his girlfriend with his sexual prowess. I imagine she had an emotional reaction but not the one planned. She probably should now be referred to as his ex-girlfriend from now on.

Oh well. Viagra con Dios.

first-person tedious

I realized in the last several months that I really don't like novels written in the first person. (For those needing a lit refresher, a novel in the first person is written like "I saw Mary at the movies" and "we threw a rock through Fred's window.")

Fiction, movies, plays, TV shows, and the like require us to suspend disbelief. But I often find it harder to do that when the writer chooses the first person.

Any thriller or suspense novel in the first person telegraphs the ending, when you think about it. You know the narrator survives because he or she is now telling you the story. The Sunset Boulevard exception is used on occasion, but that seems trite now. It was original the first time, but derivative every time thereafter.

I was trying to think of the great writers I admire and could only come up with one who writes occasionally in the first person: T.C. Boyle. Most of the masters use or used the third person. That allows for more variety and context because the story can be told from several perspectives. I think it also requires superior writing skills.

There's a tendency in first person, particularly in first novels, for the writer to sound self-aggrandizing. Equally, the writing is often weakened because the writer uses easy exposition, rather than more difficult character development through action and dialog to peel back the layers and show us what makes someone tick.

I'm now consciously avoiding first-person novels because I often find myself annoyed by them. I pick up the book, skim the first chapter or two, and put it back if I see "I" or "me" or "us" or "we." Our society is narcissistic enough that I don't need to spend time with an imaginary someone who can't stop talking about him or herself.

Utterly unrelated to this post, doesn't this picture look like a cartoon face when you glance at it quickly?

100 years of bodybuilders

A site called memolution.com has collected together twenty vintage and contemporary photographs of bodybuilders, showing how the body type has changed over the last one hundred-plus years. It's interesting how men went from fit to freakishly huge. What will they look like in another hundred years?

Although the Husband lifts a lot of weights, he's not a bodybuilder but knows quite a few of them. One thing I observed about them is they're more obsessed by how they look than any women I've ever known. They have no shame about posing in front of anything that reflects back at them.

That's Mr. and Miss Britain appearing below who won a competition in 1964. They're no relation, but she looks old enough to be his mother. To see the whole group, please visit this link.

it's not porn...

This is very well directed. Even the CEO of the company spoofed in this faux commercial says it's funny. I guess it proves that old maxim: "I don't care what you say about me as long as you get my name right."

I don't want to talk like a pirate

Yesterday was "Talk Like a Pirate Day." At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, I find the idea annoying. It's fine for elementary school children, but grown adults?

Who knows how pirates really spoke? Is there any proof that pirates of earlier centuries spoke differently than other seamen, considering most pirates were either sailors who went AWOL or mutinied or, in some cases, were captured and pressed into service?

So then maybe it should really be called "Talk Like a Pirate Character From a 1930s B Movie Day." Because that's the way celebrants talk on the day in question.

Personally, I think "Talk Like a Slutty Pirate Day" would be much more entertaining.

the 40,000-square-foot cottage

The New York Times ran an intriguing article yesterday about a jewelry entrepreneur who's renovating her 40,000-square-foot house in Newport, Rhode Island. I used the word "cottage" in the title because that's what some titans called their massive Newport vacation mansions in the nineteenth century.

The piece also includes a little love story about how the fiftyish homeowner fell in love with her younger and hunky Italian-American contractor, who pretty much had the renovation gig fall into his lap. Before this, he built custom-made playhouses for kids and dogs, so he definitely stumbled onto a good deal.

I cannot fathom living in such a massive house. I truly think I would hate it. I like intimate spaces. I wouldn't like a living room the size of an airport departure terminal.

Do check out the article and accompanying slide show. It's pretty amazing. Talk about an expensive money pit. It may be a showcase, but it'd also put a death grip on your earnings.

I'm reminded of a fascinating documentary the husband and I watched recently called The Queen of Versailles about a couple who built a 90,000-square-feet mansion in Florida and ran into serious financial difficulties. (If you have $100 million gathering dust in a drawer anyplace, you can take the property off their hands.)

glimpses of an unseen past

My husband James and I traveled out of town this past weekend to attend his cousin's wedding. When we were there, his aunt gave him a DVD made from old family video tapes of various get-togethers over the years.

James spent a lot of time visiting his aunt, uncle, and cousin when he was a kid, so the DVD includes many shots of him at various ages from about ten through early adulthood. We watched it together later, and while it was nostalgic and somewhat boring for him, it was fascinating for me to see my husband as a teenager and young man.

I've already viewed parts of it again several times alone as I'm fascinated to watch a man before I knew him. So much of his present personality can be glimpsed in these past captured moments, but I can also see how much he's matured.

What strikes me most of all is his inherent but not obvious shyness. He's not a wilting violet but he's also not the life of the party, either. I see now why my husband only got in trouble in his younger days when he was two sheets to the wind. James is no longer shy but he's still quiet, a man of fewer words. He's told me he felt awkward as a kid -- he was always much taller and bigger -- and that edge is visible in the old tapes.

And my gracious what a hunk he became as soon as he went through puberty. You can see him transform in a span of about a year through a few scenes and he just oozes sex appeal once the child has disappeared. I'm not ashamed to admit I've been lusting after my teenage husband.

James did not lose his virginity until his senior year of high school in a Mrs. Robinson sort of situation. I can't fathom how his chastity was not assaulted before that, but I imagine his shyness was part of the reason. He needed an alpha female to take control, and ultimately that's what happened.

I do know that if I was sixteen and I met the sixteen-year-old James seen in those old videos, he would not have remained a virgin until he was eighteen.

hipsters past their sell-by date

Us magazine has itself all worked up in its most recent issue because Brad Pitt had his hair cut military short and is now clean shaven. This was necessary for a film he's currently making.

I'm not a big fan of Brad Pitt. I think he's been okay in some roles, but terrible in others. I think his talent is limited and his work is often mannered and, quite frankly, amateurish at times. If he looked like an average Joe, he wouldn't be a movie star.

So I'm not about to be apoplectic because he's had his hair cut, nor would I be about any movie actor for that matter.

Quite honestly, I think it was long past time for him to get rid of his silly longhair rocker look. He turns fifty in a few months. He hasn't been a teenager in a good long while. He has long outgrown that faux hipster look.

I think a great majority of middle-age men look bad in long hair. It also ages them. Nothing says "desperately clinging to the last shreds of my youth" than a middle-age man with long hair. Most younger men can't pull it off, so the older guys certainly can't.

I think actors like George Clooney or Daniel Craig have a much better look. They recognize they're men, not boys, and don't groom themselves like they might still be carded. I think an actor with a man's haircut has more presence and gravitas. A middle-age guy with stringy, graying hair that's too long looks like a jokester.

I would not surprised, however, if Pitt lets his hair grow long again after he's done shooting. He strikes me as one of those men who can never quite grow up, but not in an admirable way.

out of town

The Husband and I returned last night from a three-day trip out of town. We had planned this a while ago, and we went back and forth about whether we should take our son with us. He's a breeze to take anywhere, but on the other hand, we had not had a weekend away for just the two of us since before he was born.

We decided in the end not to take him. At his age, he's entertained by anything, so an extended trip would be no more exciting than supermarket shopping. And it's good for him to experience a little independence.

A friend asked shortly before we left if I was freaking about leaving him behind. I have to be honest -- I wasn't really. I expected to miss him, but I didn't see myself going into super-maternal withdrawal like some women I know. James and I have had a few date nights without him, and I didn't go to pieces. (I didn't forget about him, either.)

Knowing that he's being left in super competent hands definitely helped, I think. If someone climbed in the window and abducted him, then I think I would be totally freaked.

As I predicted, we had a great time and I didn't melt down. I missed him, sure, and we could always be reached. We checked in and learned he was having a blast, and he certainly seemed jazzed when we "talked" to him on the phone.

He clearly did seem to miss us, though. As soon as we arrived, he greeted us with great excitement and was ready to go home immediately. He didn't fuss about us being gone, possibly confident we'd be back. But he wasn't taking any chances once he saw us again.

It was nice to go away, but it was very nice coming home, too. Having a child and a pet definitely makes the return equally rewarding.

inane ink

I saw this picture online and did a double-take at the tattoo on her ankle. Closeup provided below (or right-click on her picture).

A hairdryer? Really? You want that on your ankle for the rest of your life? She has decent legs but thinks it's necessary to clutter them up with that?

I'm guessing maybe she's a cosmetologist and thinks this is some sort of necessary statement. But what if hairdryers look entirely different in a decade or two?

no more strip clubs?

I read a lot of political websites to keep track of what's happening in the US. This candidate's ad, seen below, is getting a lot of attention now. I imagine that's because of its anti-politics pitch.

But what does he have against strip clubs? By no longer going to them, that somehow makes him a better man? What about the women who work in those clubs who have to support their families?

For what it's worth, it looks like he's wearing underwear, not swim trunks. This ad will probably help him, and while it made me laugh, I wasn't impressed. Who knows what he stands for?

Here is an ad from Vermont that's pitching the same approach in a more spirited effort. And here's one from New York that just can't be topped for style.

I forgive you, software geeks

Last month I wrote about the frustration I was having with Windows not working the way it should. I tried posting help queries on several techy type foums but no one seemed to understand what I was trying to communicate because their software knowledge was far above mine. I ultimately suspected the problem was with Windows and not the video software, which I originally thought was the cause.

So I resigned myself to live in frustration with the problem until some future Windows upgrade would remedy the matter. But several upgrades came and went and the bug remained.

The day before yesterday, after yet another Windows update, the problem disappeared. Obviously I wasn't alone because some people somewhere ragged at the right people to fix it. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even resigned after I discovered the problem, but I certainly hope it wasn't because of my complaint email.

So I forgive you, Windows tech geeks, wherever you are. And Steve, if you resigned over this, you're forgiven so you can come back now.

For faster service, maybe I should have just offered to send some naked pictures of myself to whoever could post a solution to my problem.

fifth blog anniversary

Today is the fifth anniversary of this blog. I have posted once a day every day for five years, with two or three exceptions when my husband posted for me. That's about 1825 posts, give or take.

I'll write more soon about this blog milestone soon, but not today.

It's also my birthday. I'm not trawling for wishes here, because this is the first birthday where I'm not entirely wild about another year passing. I'm 28 today. That's seeming oldish to me right now. Sometimes I think I'm old for my age, and other times I feel young for my age, but now I'm just feeling older.

I also believe I've lived a full life so far, so I guess that's good. But in another two years I'll be thirty. Eeek.

This is my first birthday as a mother, and I'm truly glad for that. I think it would be a lot harder to turn a year older and still hoping for a child.

I'll be 46 when my son turns 18. Okay, I'm stopping this age talk. This is not the day to be doing math like that.

I feel great, I look great, I have great health, I'm married to a wonderful man, I have a fantastic son, and my life is full of love and happiness with loved ones and friends. I have nothing to bitch about when there are so many truly unfortunate people in this world.

life as a warrior princess

The New York Times ran an interesting op-ed piece earlier this week by Jennifer Sky, who was something of a big deal model in her mid-teens and then went on to become an actress and stunt woman. She still does some modeling today but has put acting on hold.

This line struck me, where she says, as a young model, she "soon learned that this was a world where young women’s rights were worth less than the clothing they wore." She then compares the far superior treatment she received as an actress.

Even though I was only in my mid-teens when I started modeling (although I never achieved a career level like Sky's), I knew going in that I would be treated like a piece of meat. I may have been young and naive in many ways, but I had read enough about modeling to know I was a very fungible commodity. So when disappointments came my way and I was treated with zero respect, I wasn't surprised.

My husband and I have had several discussions about having Joey do some baby modeling. He has the right temperament and look, and given both James and I have modeling experience here in Australia, we could get him some work without a great deal of difficulty because we know some of the right people to start him off.

For a baby, modeling is not like it is for teenage girls. The kid has to be pampered or he won't cooperate. Plus, the parent must be there at all times, so it's not like we would let anyone exploit him. As an infant, he would probably find it mildly entertaining like he does most places he goes. We could salt his earnings away for university or other career plans he might have.

At some point, if we do this, we will also stop after a few years. We've both agreed he should not model as a child. He'd be out of modeling before he reached an exploitable age.

Arguably one of the reasons I didn't really take off as a model at fourteen was because I didn't have "stage parents." They didn't give a shit whether I modeled or not so there was no one behind me shoving me in anyone's face. I did, however, witness plenty of other kids with intense stage mothers. That's a horrible species of motherhood that I would never allow myself to become.

men want sex, women want swag

An enterprising person used the "suggested search" function for Google and entered these two phrases, one at a time: "how to hint to your boyfriend" and "how to hint to your girlfriend."

The result shows the four most common topics searched for that begin with these two phrases. Rather than me retyping it here, it's more fun to look at the screen capture itself, found here.

The third one under "how to hint to your girlfriend" may have been obscured by Google's so-called "Safe Search" function because it was considered "obscene." One can easily imagine what some of the popular queries could be.

I suspect the demographic driving some of these was on the younger side. I don't think many women above 18 would be much interested in a promise ring.

Men may be from Mars and all that, but not all women are cut from the same cloth, just like men. Flowers are pretty, but I never wanted a man to send them to me. They'll just die. I wanted something that lasted and, if the relationship withered, I could sell it on eBay.


here.

an expensive pain in the ass

A 43-year-old woman in Tennessee is facing criminal charges after allegedly stealing $5,000 in cash from her boyfriend, according to a report in the Australian media. She used what she thought was a foolproof hiding place for the loot -- she stuffed the whole wad of cash up her ass.

Her plot was discovered when she became ill because the stolen money remained lodged in her anus, notwithstanding her attempts to remove it with a toilet brush and tongs. Sickened and bleeding severely, she was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.

In unrelated but equally disquieting news from the Philipines, a reporter recently had similar emergency anal surgery after half a cucumber got stuck in his anus. The journalist claimed he accidentally sat naked on a cucumber left upright on a chair in his bedroom, notwithstanding baby oil and gay porn were also found at the scene of the incident.

In searching for more news items about this topic, I saw one headline about a group releasing an "anal gospel" recording, which perhaps understandably left me with a WTF reaction. Some dictionary research quickly revealed "anal" is one of the many languages spoken in India and Burma.

junk food rampage

This incident happened several years ago, but for some reason, the video just went totally viral last week and amassed ten million views and counting. The shame keeps on giving for the woman caught on tape.

I must admit I've never had McNuggets. I have no desire to try them. There is nothing on a chicken that is a nugget, except the little blops they leave here and there in the barnyard dirt, so I don't find the name at all appealing.

I've also seen a picture of how McNuggets are made, and it's pretty gross. Maybe to cure this woman of her addiction, the judge should have sentenced her to a month working in a McNugget factory.

I am (slightly) psychic

We know a couple in their fifties who live near us. I'll call them the Greens. They're not friends of ours but we know them to say hello.

Mrs. Green is something of a whiner and complainer, the sort who has her own negative rain cloud with her always. She is visibly out of shape. Mr. Green is very charming and friendly, extremely fit, and a bit of a harmless flirt.

While his wife looks like she might have been very attractive in her youth, she's gone downhill, but he's quite good looking still. It's common knowledge the Greens do not have a harmonious marriage, as Mrs. Green is happy to tell anyone who will listen. You have to wonder what they ever saw in each other.

A few months back, a new couple in their fifties moved in next door to the Greens. I'll call them the Joneses. Mr. Jones is a sour crab; perhaps his personality was lost somewhere in the move. He's paunchy and dresses in clothes he must have inherited from his grandfather. He appears to have no friends and makes no effort to cultivate them.

Mrs. Jones is the exact opposite. She's bubbly, outgoing, and always has something nice to say about anyone. She keeps very fit and has made lots of new friends within the community. While Mr. Jones freely makes snide unsolicited remarks about his wife behind her back, she never has an unkind word about anyone, including her husband.

A few days after the Joneses moved in, I said to my husband, "I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Green and Mrs. Smith ended up having an affair." They just seemed like a perfect fit.

Flash forward a few months later. A neighbor tells me the Greens are getting a divorce and are in the process of moving. I wonder if what I predicted came true. Yesterday I learned the truth: Mrs. Grumpy Green and Mr. Bitter Jones are the ones having an affair with each other, not their charming spouses.

So, I was kind of psychic, but I had the wrong pairing. I'm still hoping Mr. Green and Mrs. Jones end up a couple. They seem so right for each other. They deserve a happy ending, not their soon to be ex-spouses.

sacrilegious dog

This photo always makes me laugh. I keep it in a small folder of favorite funny photos I've found surfing the web. I've tried to find more about its history but have been unsuccessful.

We'll probably never know if the nun ever discovered the piss in her cloak. How would she react? I'd think some nuns would totally lose their shit, while others would be "meh, whatever."

If I had to guess, this appears to be France or Italy in the later 1950s or earlier 1960s. The dog's face is totally priceless. He looks utterly nonplussed about pissing on people. "I do it all the time, man."

When I was just starting school, we had a neighbor who had an unaltered male cat. He was super friendly but you had to watch yourself around him because he had a reputation for pissing on people or their stuff. My father was loading the car trunk for a business trip one day and the cat sprayed his luggage.

Kitty was not too welcome at our house after that. My father would chase it when he saw it in the yard. The cat got the ultimate revenge, however -- he repeatedly pissed on our front door after that.

killer sex (literally)

This is starting to look like a very competitive year for the Darwin Awards.

In China, a couple was having hot sex against a high-rise hotel window, recreating an explicit scene in the arthouse hit movie Shame. And then the glass shattered. You can probably guess what happened next -- they plunged to their death. I'm guessing they didn't climax before they died, but several articles I found online said they remained in each other's arms as they fell.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that building codes in non-first world countries aren't always the best. So shagging against a window in what could be a shoddily constructed building may not be the best idea in the world. Indeed, that's exactly what caused the window to fall away: building inspectors determined a cheap window had been improperly installed.

Here's where I'm glad I have a fear of heights. I would have no problem standing next to a high rise window and looking down. But I would definitely not have sex against the glass.

but is it art?

An artist I knew back in Los Angeles once told me "art is anything that evokes an emotion." That sounds spot on for a moment, but then when you think about it, this could include lots of things that aren't art.

You see a lost child alone and crying. That evokes emotion, but is it art? A photograph or painting of a lost child crying might be considered art. But what if it's a badly done, amateurish painting or a very poorly done photo? Is that still art but very bad art? Arguably not all paintings are art nor are all photos.

The piece pictured below by Martin Eder is an installation, what could loosely be defined as something that might hang in a gallery or museum but almost certainly not a home or business. It measures roughly 20 feet high and 32 feet wide. It currently hangs in a prestigious Leipzig gallery.

But is it art? What emotions does it evoke? The only things that come to my mind is that it must be a pain in the ass to keep clean, but that's not an emotion. My husband said it looks like a starship that had some serious technical issues when it unsuccessfully tried to make the leap to warp speed. That's not an emotion, either.

Maybe the artist I knew in Los Angeles was completely full of shit. But then what is art?

google myopia

When hunting for photos to use on my Tumblr, sometimes I locate something nice but it's a mediocre quality jpg. So I use Google's image search to locate a better one.

The curvaceous girl below looked like a good candidate, but the image was too small. So I headed over to Google to see what I could find. I eventually found a much higher resolution version and used that. It also appears here.

For unknown reasons, however, this woman also turned up as a match. I'm thinking the A.I. computer that runs Google's image search is pretty confused sexually or needs some kind of corrective lenses.

happy labo(u)r day

Happy Labor Day to those in North America. Australia has a somewhat schizophrenic equivalent, celebrated at different times of the year, depending on your state or territory.

In some places it's celebrated various times in March while others in May. Here in New South Wales, it's celebrated in October.

When I lived in the states, the only real Labor Day events I knew of were picnics, cookouts, or shopping. The original function seems somewhat overlooked now. Here it does not appear to be as prominent a holiday as back home, maybe because it's not held on the same date everywhere.

I have not been in the US in nearly five years now. There's a chance we may visit this year, and I'm hoping it will happen.

I'd say I have more a deep longing than a homesickness. I think a trip of a few weeks would recharge my Yankee batteries and allow me to stay away for a long period again. I always wonder, when we finally go, will it seem more alien than familiar to me now that I've been gone for so long?

Have a restful holiday and hopefully you will not have to work!

are you a martian?

Scientist Steven Benner presented fresh evidence last week at a geochemistry conference that humans may have evolved from organisms that originally came from Mars. The findings were trumpeted in the media with headlines like "Are We All Martians?" and similar variations.

This theory holds that when life started, Mars was far more hospitable for development than Earth. Some time later, as the theory goes, seed organisms of sorts traveled to our planet by hitching a ride on a meteorite. Every living thing now on earth descended from those traveling organisms.

This certainly sounds plausible to me, but then again what do I know. Science class was always a mystery to me in school. The only way I passed was by doing extra credit projects that usually involved making something fanciful.

I do wonder about the semantics of this, however. If I emigrate to another country and have children there, and all of my descendants remain in the new country and never visit my home country, at some point they would no longer be considered "Americans." My son is American by virtue of my citizenship, but what about his children or grandchildren if they never move away from Australia?

Since out ancestors long ago emigrated from Mars and it's impossible to return, I think the correct phrasing would be that we're descendants of Martians but that we've always been Earthlings. You, me -- we were never Martians ourselves.