MM's First Shoot; 38 Revolver

While up at the cabin to take Gaia & Marco (another Italian exchange student living near us) to the Grand Canyon, I took the kids out shooting, and MM got to shoot a real gun, my little Ruger 1022, for the first time. She didn't do too bad.

I also got to shoot a new [to me] gun, my grandfather's old 38 revolver. He was a Phoenix policeman and won the gun in a shooting contest. It sat in my mom's safe deposit box for the last 30 years until she moved to Arizona and gave it to me. I got it cleaned. It worked like a charm after probably sitting unused for at least 50 years. It's a small piece with not much of a grip, so harder to shoot. It packs a lot of firepower in the small frame.

Zip Swing at C Cove Park

That afternoon, after the AHG color off, I took the kids to Christy Cove Park and got a couple good shots of MM and Fish on the zip swing.

AHG Color Splash Day

I took the girls up to St. Gabriel in Cave Creek for a color splash day with their AHG troop. Parents and older kids shot them with dyed water from water guns as they ran by. Some tried to run fast or avoid the shots, but we made sure they got colored up.

Ready Player One Review

I had meant to write a longer review of both the book and the movie but ran out of time. I enjoyed the book but thought it had a couple too many deus ex machina's. The opening scene of the movie was very well done and captured the excitement and novelty of the book's central idea, which was: How great would it be to play all your old 80s favorites -- games and music and TV and movies -- in virtual reality? The movie also brought to vivid life my favorite scene from the book, the only one written well, the "dance" between Parzival and Art3mis. The big screen version was close to how I imagined it in my head. The movie's closing scene was a lame failure in comparison to the opener, although it would have been hard to top the latter. I suppose the scene was effective for showing how un-sexy and un-exciting real life is (compared to the OASIS), even if it's supposed to be a chase scene.

The book has probably one of the best summations of the current American atheist worldview:


"Here's the deal, Wade. You're something called a 'human being.' That's a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we're descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you'll learn more about it later. But trust me, that's really how we all got here. There's proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

"Oh, and by the way ... there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid. Deal with it.

"You're probably wondering what happened before you got here. An awful lot of stuff, actually. Once we evolved into humans, things got pretty interesting. We figured out how to grow food and domesticate animals so we didn't have to spend all our time hunting. Our tribes got much bigger, and we spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus. Then, after fighting a bunch of wars with each other over land, resources, and our made-up gods, we eventually got all of our tribes organized into a 'global civilization.' But, honestly, it wasn't all that organized, or civilized, and we continued to fight a lot of wars with each other. But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology. For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things. Computers. Medicine. Lasers. Microwave ovens. Artificial hearts. Atomic bombs. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back. We also created a global communications network that lets us all talk to each other, all around the world, all the time. Pretty impressive, right?

"But that's where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it's pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we've had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it's been going on for a while now.

"Also, it turns out that burning all those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we're still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left.

"Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. Things used to be awesome, but now they're kind of terrifying. To be honest, the future doesn't look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in 'decline.' Some people even say it's 'collapsing.'

"You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.

"What happens when you die? Well, we're not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You're just dead, your brain stops working, and then you're not around to ask annoying questions anymore. Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called 'heaven' where there is no more pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There's no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever.

"Sorry."

Future Ballplayers

MM's New Haircut

Courtesy of Bobbins, just in time for her birthday