Ahhhh, Da-da's Home Again...

...after a long road trip, and Da-da's house looks... well, KRASS GEIL. (Man, that German nihilist housesitting/rug recovery unit really spruced the place up.) Can't wait for the bank appraiser to come by.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

That Midnight Look of Parenthood

You mean to say I'm gonna suddenly age like 90 years in two minutes and growl and LEAP
from my wheelchair and throw A Man Called Da-da through a tiny window? NFW.

28 Seconds Later...

Been at the Hershey's again, Final Girl?

Like the quasi-zombies (they aren't technically zombies) in the movie, 28 Days Later, where a mad-monkey-kung-fu-RAGE disease spreads to postmodern Brits like a crack-froth Montezuma's Revenge through a cruiseship full o' Rotarians, there's another very real and very dangerous demographic that can quickly mimic this type of ravenously psychotic fast-moving zombie-crazed biteyness WAY faster than 28 days -- indeed, it can happen in a mere 28 seconds. Who and how? Kids and sugar, hello?

Feed delightful munchkins maple syrup, cake, cookies, cotton candy bongs, etc. and they fairly explode into raging, gibbering, pinballing zombies (the fast kind), sometimes quicker than 28 seconds. Typically, they erupt after about 12 minutes, especially if they're boys and there's more than one of them. Da-da thinks of these short ontological windows as short-fuze events, offering about 10-12 minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Alas, if they're your kids, you're in the blast event-horizon for the duration.

What can be done during one of these attacks? Nothing, of course. You have to wait it out. Like the ancients always said, "That which you cannot cure, you must endure," and parenting is nothing if not a marathon of painful zombie endurance. Experienced zombie parents deploy sugar tactically -- on special occasons -- prepared for the coming onslaught with various sugar-burning activities like towing the car to the top of Mt. Everest or building a giant Egyptian pyramid grill for Da-da from 2.2 ton stones in the backyard. You think the pyramids were built on grain and garlic? Nope. Those suckers were constructed via some kinda Pharoanic sugary whack-juice extracted from who-knows-what and fed to... you got it: CRAZED, SUGARED-UP CHILDREN:

"Get that finished or no SpongeBob tonight. I'm not telling you again!"

"HEY, YOU KIDS! After you finish your slushies and candy BONGS, go outside and BUILD ME A PYRAMID. Bigger than the last two. Align them with the three stars in Orion's Belt, and NO WHINING. Be sure to clean up and brush your teeth, afterwards. AND DON'T TRACK SAND IN THE HOUSE AGAIN."

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

"Ha ha, Timmy, remember what happened the last time you pushed that poodle's button?"

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Kids, THIS is a demonstration of centripetal AND centrifugal force.
Either way, your blood should be pooling somewhere -- and NO, we aren't there, yet.

RIP Brad Adwers (aka, John Yaya)

Brad Adwers (aka, John Yaya), co-founder of AcmeVaporware and network guy extraordinaire, seen here either disconnecting or reconnecting the Universe, died a few days ago at the ripe old age of 42, the big dope. He wasn't perfect (not many of us are), but he will most definitely be missed. Interestingly, this represents the very first time Brad's name (let alone a picture of him) has ever appeared anywhere on the 'net -- esp. paired with a pic. That kind of security isn't easy to achieve. Dr. Smallberries said to take solace in the Ultimate Security, as nothing so terribly weird ever dies -- and certainly, nothing loved ever dies, either. In fact, he's pretty sure it's walking around his parlor at night, making his phone make weird noises. Just what he needs: another ghost. Thanks a lot, John Bradley. (Oh, and if Emmy is reading this, Da-da has your Iron Maiden alllll ready.)

The Brad Unit always appeared fresh and well pressed, if not totally incomprehensible.
At least he bought the shirt Da-da made.

[UPDATE 3/9/12: Happy Birthday, you bonehead.]

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Da-da's been staring at this for hours and it's STILL funny, HAAHAAHAA. Ok, maybe not.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Paying $20 for theme park parking makes Da-da happy. Yes, it does.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Ma-ma KNOWS how to pick a motel.

Da-da ID'd by French Nationals (UPDATED)

The culprit.

This is fun. Da-da's reporting live from the field, currently at some obscure, old hotel where movie stars used to hang out (hey, the rooms were cheap), a waypoint on a longer roadtrip. Forced out of the room at 6:30 am by the earlybird piranha brothers, Da-da was recently sitting in the lobby of the hotel, hiding from his fate of loading the car and wrangling spent nuclear monkey material into the Jeep, when two 20-something French nationals, wearing matching Abercrombie and Fitch gear, suddenly stopped before Da-da where he sat, and stared at him.

"Excuse me, please. Are you a... hippie?"

Ok, Da-da was indeed wearing his loud green Grateful Dead Celtic tie-dye (sorry Dead fans, Da-da's never heard anything the Dead has done, he just liked the shirt), but his hair is short and his beard... well, moderately trimmed, and he's wearing a highly distressed San Francisco Giants cap. He looks absolutely nothing like a hippie. But, while Da-da would normally have come up with a sharp zinger comment, he got no sleep last night, and was frankly puzzled by the fact that there were TWO such matching French Abercrombie couples in Da-da's hotel, so... in this confusion vortex, all Da-da could answer was (if you'll pardon the first-person):

"Yes. I am a hippy."

The French couple was thrilled and immediately asked if they could have their pictures taken with Da-da. He conceded and the front desk clerk immortalized the moment, the French couple giggling after Da-da answered their query about his name, deadpan: "They call me, Da-da."

Da-da is now inextricably intertwined in the memories of at least two French people and their immediate families as Da-da, the Hippy. Da-da can't make this stuff up, folks.

UPDATE: Later in the trip, another hotel, another tie-dye shirt... while riding up in an elevator, Da-da overheard a German tween whisper to his father and younger sister, in German, entre eux, nodding toward Da-da: "Du siehst? Ein Hippie." Da-da sighed and just looked at the kid, who looked a little pale at that point (maybe hippies are the equivalent of some Nietzschean Superzombie in Europe). Da-da can understand a handful of languages very well, German being one of his best. The elevator doors opened and Da-da stepped out, saying, "Das ist krass geil." The tween's jaw dropped and that was that, hippienessity notwithstanding.

Father's Day Rapprochement

Damn. Da-da forgot the sippy cups.

It's Father's Day, so please allow Da-da to climb out of the comic maelstrom a moment (which means most will stop reading, but Da-da doesn't care). His boys have finally calmed down enough after more than a handful of years, so Da-da can pause and look back a bit before pushing past the illusory summit; after all, he writes this blog for his boys to read one day, so a little perspective every once in a while keeps the ice axes buried in the chicken.

Da-da's lived a hundred lifetimes. A thousand. And in there he's had some really terrible jobs (and terrible bosses, O the inhumanity), jobs that nearly did Da-da in, and while Da-da bitches a lot about his radioactive monkey progeny, well... being Mr. Mom is the best job he's ever had. Indeed, Da-da feels sorry for those who don't get/take the chance to raise their own children because of whatever reason. They don't know what they're missing. (Whatever you do, don't sign up for Au Pair Despair.) Sure, it's a hard job. MAN, is it hard. One of the toughest ever -- at least for Da-da and his rough brood. Summitting an Everest of broken glass every day while dragging around a bus-load of angry Rotarians would be luxury in comparison.

Regardless, being Mr. Mom is the best learning experience Da-da's ever had. You couldn't know this, o'course, but Da-da's got one of those installed memory banks that are annoying as hell: he can't forget anything, not the diaper episodes, the projectile vomits, the shushing-to-sleep episodes, the tantrums, none of it. But the hardest part of being a parent (for Da-da, anyway) is overcoming the fear that comes with being a parent. Da-da doesn't mean the fear of having children. He means the anxiety (that grips fathers more than mothers, perhaps), the TERROR that something's gonna happen to your little ones, fear that's multiplied when you have another... then it goes down the more you have, which must be some primitive passing-the-genes-on male thing. Or maybe it's because you're so punch-drunk by the time the other kids arrive that it doesn't matter, but you do get over it. The molten lava runs out of the caldera, burns its course, and leaves you stronger for it, not to mention getting rid of all those pesky leaves you needed to rake and trees you needed to prune. Needless to say, positive thinking and a good sense of humor is vital to the job, that and trust -- which is probably the toughest to maintain, learning to trust that everything will eventually go according to plan if you'd just get your ass out of the way.

Believe it or not, part of Da-da's rapprochement was the research he did into secret societies and arcane subjects and spiritual matters for over 20 years, research that lead to a deep, underlying understanding of, well... Life, the Universe and Everything, an understanding that stripped away obsolete bits of Da-da that never mattered to the climb, or the climber. He won't need that sofa or that samurai sword on the top of a mountain, so why was he carrying them? Same went for his music career, his art career, his silly tenure in the upholstered, treadmilled halls of Discorporate America. His idea of himself has been immolated on the push toward the summit, the crucible poured out, the bad metaphors either dashed on the rocks, or boiled, mixed with mayo and served on a crunchy roll. The hairless ape in the silvery firesuit was handed a walking stick and a new pair of eyes he wouldn't trade for all the music deals and book deals and art openings and other silly ego ephemera of a lifetime.

What's it like being a parent, so far? It's like watching a good, old fashioned thriller: Da-da laughed, Da-da cried, Da-da was on the edge of his seat. On to the next ascent... which looks steep, krikey. Where in hell is that UP escalator? (Sure are a lot of DOWN ones around.) Watch your step. And Happy Father's Day, gents.

So long, Brad, wherever you are. Be sure to take the UP escalator, dude.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

In case anyone was wondering, there is one simple ingredient that turns the above image into the below image. Can you guess what that is?

That's right: CHILDREN.

Da-da just spent an hour prying indescribably gooey thingies from nooks and crannies of his vehicle, most of which were sentient and knew Da-da's social security number by heart -- and the family hasn't even left, yet. This hardly surprises Da-da as nothing surprises Da-da after six years of constant Da-da surprises. Ok, that's a lie. There was one little surprise: how did the boys get ice cream sandwiches INSIDE the exhaust manifold? Does not bode well. Then again, not much had been well-boding since the little miscreants showed up. Sure, they're all cute and adorable and full of light and hugs just before you're ready to kill them, but it's just a cheap trick. A TRICK. [sigh]

Summer Roadtrip Prelaunch Countdown commencing... confidence is NOT high... repeat, CONFIDENCE IS NOT HIGH.

What's For Breakfast?

What's for breakfast? Da-da doesn't know. Why are you asking him? Ask the giant with the fuzzy feet. What Da-da wants to know is: WHO'S GOT WET PAWS?

The End of Hot Shoes?

Da-da's been warning of this for a while now, ever since the sun began showing signs of changing its polarity underpants. Jeez, hurry up. Because of this growing geomagnetic sympatico, and what with all the extra solar megawattage streaming into the earth's poles (making lots of pretty auroras), we've already seen increased earthquakes, but we might begin seeing more instances of volcanism, too.

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano (say that three times fast) has now been joined by Puyehue volcano in Chile. These aren't major eruptions, but if there are a few more like this (or worse) in the same hemisphere, then something's up down deep and our little interglacial epoch will invariably reap the climatic fruits... jeez, who talks like that? Bleah. Basically, the planet is already trying to cool naturally, and a few more volcanic pops will turn that cooling mechanism into a serious Frigidaire maquiladora. No need to panic, o'course. It's just Earth 2.0, now with Weather 2.0! These minor alerts are merely FYIs designed to predict future rain jacket sales and generic hunkerability requirements. Your shoes were already on fire, lady... but maybe not for long.

Those hot shoes might be cooling off.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Isn't she beautiful? Her muffler bearings just got fixed for just under $2200!

Yup, Da-da's warmin' up the family truckster. Pray for Da-da. The fun starts Sunday. Da-da will strive for live postage on the ten-day roadtrip, but no promises. Ed's Motel Apache and Discount Crematorium doesn't have that INNERNET thang.

Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

Triumph of a Man Called Da-da

"...Da-da suddenly found himself with no marketable skills. No contacts. No brains. No looks. No guile. No drive. Nothing the modern world used as currency. Caring for children had taken him out of the money stream, away from what other people thought was real, valuable, worthy of respect. (Respect is only for mothers.) It had only taken five years, half a decade to make it all vanish like his old musical career, now a phantom limb. Skills like listening, making intelligent conversation were considered archaic, mock-worthy, a curiosity. His society had been supplanted by a fey, scantily clad alien monster that stared at its fearful reflection all day and all night, with nothing for anyone who didn't feed it. In that same short span, his art had become tired, his writing obsolete, both filled with words and concepts modern humans had ostensibly forgotten and couldn't be bothered to look up; that was too much like work. Now, he marked his days with how much shampoo he used: one bottle equaled about two months; five bottles and it was the holidays! Time to tell his visiting mother-in-law that he still didn't have any promising leads. Truth was, he'd become what used to be termed an Institutional Man, and he didn't mind as much as you might think. Sure, mornings saw his eyes filled with sand as he went downstairs to make meals that were at best half-eaten, but perhaps appreciated in some future time. Despite this threat of pancake mortality, he'd smile as he stirred his instant coffee and looked at the morning trees outside, for he knew that not everyone understands the currency of hugs, the fringe benefits of life construction and maintenance. It's not like he was missing much out in the world, anyway. And yes, he'd be lying if he didn't admit that part of that morning smile was gentle schadenfreude, because Da-da knew that the same thing will happen to you one day... or you'll spend your life secretly wishing it would."

                        [-Excerpted from Le Prisonnier Heureux by M. Proust. Trans. by Pere Pullum-Fictus.]

An Argument of Ferrets

Bronko and Nagurski's Helpful Tips for Grandpa (or, "BIG PANTS REQUIRED")

The boys are really quite close... and sure, maybe a little hard on Downtown Tokyo.

In the midst of one of their recent no-holds-barred meeting-of-the-minds, Bronko and Nagurski -- Da-da's four- and six-year-old, two-fisted love-muffin gargantuas -- thrashed out hirsute, sage advice, not only for the grampas in their lives, but for quantum grampas everywhere (in Westernized countries, anyway). Da-da has thus been tasked with clarifying the role of those carrying the title, "GRAMPA," for today's post-post-modern, quantum children, aged two to ten. The gargantuas' hairy knuckled attorney duly informed Da-da that he must comply within the specified time frame (um, like NOW) as outlined on page 97 of the prospectus, or suffer an, "attornity" of legalage tantrums. Sure. Fine. Whatever. Please pay attention.

To Whom It May Concern... Dear Whom:

As grampa, you are duly required to carry in your pockets at all times (24/7/365) something:
A. interesting, and/or useful (no, not that); B. amusing (no, not that), or; C. incomprehensible (no, not that). Here's a handy G-rated list of things that should be found in grampa's pockets:

1. Toys (any)
2. Popsicles (unmelted)
3. More toys and popsicles
4. Cookies (sans lint)
5. More cookies (with or without lint)
6. Anything remote controlled (and G-rated)
7. Anything with a "D" rocket motor (and G-rated)
8. Extra "D" rocket motors
9. Explosives of any kind
10. A puppy
11. A giant robot
12. An extradimensional space.

Failing to fulfill this obligation will result in your grampanessity being rendered either non compos mentis or e sinus pluribus unum, and "the cat" will heretofore NOT LIKE YOU ("the cat" defined as the 1200 lb. Bengal tiger living in the backyard). You have been warned grampa-citizen.

 Needless to say, grampas by definition must be big pants people.

Is that the 5000 piece LEGO Millenium Falcon in there?

What Parenthood Actually Looks Like

Sure, Da-da used to be rich and HOT, but now... now all he's got is his incredible humility.
Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories...

What Parenthood Actually Looks Like

That should read, "And then... after making all their meals (and not having one myself), delivering the monkeys at school, fixing various things on the playground as a favor, vacuuming the house, helping a neighbor with her medications, cleaning the house, taking out the trash and recycling, watering the plants and dead-heading all the roses before 10:00 am... I blacked out. AND I LIKED IT."

Da-da's Listening to...

Da-da says: always keep your eyes on the crepe.

...makin' crepes music. MANLY crepes. Kinda gives you the crepes, doesn't it?

Thar Be BEASTIES Down There (or "Why Big Oil's Big Secret is Good News for You")

Oil companies are amusing. Like most corporations, you have to laugh at them -- you have to, or else you'll wind up with ASDI (Angry Sad Depressed Inebriated) Syndrome. When not operating as covert ops platforms (Bay of Pigs, anyone?) for spooky alphabet agencies, oil companies claim poverty for a number of PR reasons while begging for government bailouts. However, there's a big secret they don't want you to know, one that's already known, been marginalized, and quietly forgotten: One that spells good news for consumers, long-term.

Postulated back in the '30s, this tidbit came out in the '80s, hit the mainstream in the middle of the last decade... and was quietly forgotten. Da-da originally learned of this firsthand from five different sources (two petroleum engineers, one researcher and a three geologists), so he can vouch for its veracity. Basically, like much of human knowledge, we have no idea what's really going on deep beneath our feet, but Da-da will quit stalling and cut to the chase.

The majority of petroleum in the ground does not come primarily from decaying plants and animals. Fossilized plants only make up a fraction. Indeed, the term "fossil fuel" is an oxymoron, as the lion's share of petroleum comes not from decayed dinosaurs, but from countless dead microorganisms deep in the earth, along with other natural chemical processes we don't fully understand. Impossible, you say? Well, pump-jacks that have been dry for 50 years have started to pump crude again (they're designed to kick on in the presence of oil). And scientists just announced discovery of a microorganism that lives deep in the earth's crust, where we expected no life to be able to survive.

Then there's this 2008 Forbes story on a similar topic that everyone's forgotten:

The idea that oil comes from fossils "is a myth. … We need to change this myth," says petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. "All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits."

Alexander Kitchka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences brashly estimates that 60% of the content of all oil is abiotic in origin, and not from fossil fuels. He says companies should drill deeper to find it.

Kitchka says oil may be found in all sorts of geological structures such as volcanic rock or deep-sea thermal vents where companies aren't looking today.

Kutcherov points to a handful of productive oil fields in Vietnam and elsewhere that lay in hard rock such as granite. Traditional theory says oil shouldn't be present there. Certain wells in the Gulf of Mexico have produced more oil than expected. The abiotic crowd says they are slowly being refilled from a deeper source.

The abiotic oil theory goes back centuries and includes as its prominent champions Dimitri Mendeleev, best known for inventing the periodic table. It didn't gain much visibility in America until the late Cornell University astronomer Thomas Gold championed it in the 1980s. He said that oil contains organic compounds not because it is derived from fossils but because giant colonies of deep-earth bacteria feed on deep hydrocarbon pools way down in the mantle.

In the 1980s, [Gold] convinced the Swedish government and investors to drill four miles through solid granite in central Sweden. They eventually recovered 84 barrels of oil. Gold considered it a scientific success, even though the project was a commercial failure.

However, petroleum production is not a purely abiotic process. Microorganisms also play a role. Basically, you get all kinds of goodies if you add enough heat and pressure and micro-beasties, and the earth is a very big pressure cooker, naturally producing petroleum, more in some places than in others, with different oil composition in different regions, as it's a product of disparate biological, geologic and chemical processes.

Like petroleum, we also don't fully understand how coal deposits are created, nor how long the processes involved actually take. Factually, we don't really know anything -- which is fine, as no one's expected to know everything. But to pretend that you do while manufacturing myths to control the price over something you don't understand... well, greed is a time-honored human institution. 

Why do you care? Because this flies in the face of oil company and energy analyst and wall street and governmental dogma, misinformation that's been propagated for over 50 years to change the prices of things -- esp. in terms of the "Peak Oil" bugaboo. There is no Peak Oil, despite all the fear that's generating book sales. This is disinformation designed to coerce you into buying yet another fake paradigm -- yet another time-honored human institution. We might eventually use more oil than can be produced, but if we scale back and are smarter about how we use it, as Da-da hopes you're all doing, there should be plenty of oil till energy concerns decide to unveil other energy sources they've no doubt had under wraps for years, waiting to make money off them. Yes, Da-da just said that oil is a renewable resource... because it is, if we're careful. Alas, corporations have more rights than people, and live longer, and will tell you the "truth" only when it suits their bottom lines.

Sadly, corporations, and many humans associated with them only want money, at any and all costs, and the costs build up over time until said system collapses. When a system interferes with society to such an extent that the society eventually crumbles because of it, it's days are numbered, as are the days of any society that endorses it. This will one day involve yet another awesome paradigm shift, and it will happen sooner than you think. Sorry to burst your bubble, but Da-da's pretty sure you'll like the alternative.

The Barney Proof

Kid Poetry

My heart trembles like a poor leaf.
The planets whirl in my dreams.
The stars press against my window.
I rotate in my sleep.
My bed is a warm planet.

—Marvin Mercer
P.S. 153, Fifth Grade, Harlem
New York City, N.Y. (1981)

Da-da's Free Accordion Concert...

...is getting freer all the time.

Da-da's Free Accordion Concert...

...will feature at least ONE of the world's two Least Likely Phrases:

1. "That's the banjo player's Porsche."
2. "That's the accordion player's Porsche."

Da-da's Free Accordion Concert...

That jacket is actually the accordion.

...is tonight. At the top of Mt. Everest. Bring the kids. And your own oxygen (BYOO). If you're gonna dance, watch your step.

Oldest Most Distant Tantrum in the Universe Discovered...

...and yes, it turns out that Da-da, in a previous stellar incarnation, was there, sitting patiently at the back of the cosmic bus while quasar toddlers exploded in fury. Be glad you weren't there. Here's the poop if you want to get technical.

A gamma-ray toddler burst known as GRTB 090429B for the 29 April 2009 date when it was detected by NASA's AIIEIE satellite has been found to be a candidate for the most distant toddler tantrum explosion in the Universe at an estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years -- which is still not far enough away. The toddler burst lies far beyond any known quasar lawn gorillas and could be more distant than any previously known kid burst. The gigantic tantrum burst of gamma toddler rays erupted from an exploding toddler when the Universe was less than 4% of its present age, just 520 million years old, and less than 10% of its present size, when attorneys were not yet evident and eveything was much cheaper and more wholesome, yet still incredibly loud and annoying, what are you gonna do?

Gamma-ray toddler bursts, the loudest explosions known, unfortunately occur within the observable Universe at a rate of about twenty octillion per day. Because of their extreme loudness, gamma-ray toddler bursts can be detected by really anyone in the known universe (with ears) who isn't smart enough to wear earplugs. While the bursts themselves last for about 20 minutes, their painful, fading "hangover" remains in the parental observer's neural event horizon for a freaking long time, and is akin to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Detailed studies of the toddler explosion hangover during this time, when feasible, allow masochistic scientists to measure the distance to the burst. Why they would care is beyond Da-da.

[linky]

Some scientists' wooden heads make handy paperweights. Others do not.

End of Year Kinder Concert Post-mortem

This should give you some idea of Da-da's evening. O the onstage humanity.

Science Da-da Wednesdays...

Something's brewing. Hope you changed the filter.

Da-da was explaining to Nagurski, his youngest, about the weird weather this morning before dropping him off at school... and before he knew it, he'd drawn a crowd. Everyone wanted to know what was happening with the weather. Normally, Da-da would have only said a few words, but since half the group thought it was due to some outlandish event, Da-da had to put his science hat on and address the group.

We know from science done over the three days after 9/11/2001 (when no jets were flying and leaving contrails) that the earth has been naturally cooling for some time -- and we learned this a decade ago. There's precedent for this variation. Besides all the ice ages of the geologic past, the earth naturally cooled more recently (for a variety of reasons, perhaps), inducing colder temperatures and bad weather from the 13th Century all the way into the early 20th Century, in what's become know as, "the Little Ice Age." This came in the middle of an interglacial period, where the earth was unusually warm, and vikings were settling in Greenland, of all places (where Da-da is now). Sure, some glaciers have melted in the past 200 years, but a lot of them are growing again, either signaling the end of this interglacial period, or heralding a new Little Ice Age. Chances are good that this is due to the sun, which some scientists have finally admitted is a variable star (that means it changes), getting cooler then hotter then mamboing too much, then sleeping it off.

What industrial strip-mall burning man is doing is causing the planet to be unnaturally warm, pumping out heat and carbon dioxide like... well, like an industrial strip-mall burning man. Mix warm and cold on the playa and you get... WEATHER. In some cases of extreme hot and extreme cold, you get EXTREME WEATHER. Then came the kicker.

Fully half the group thought the weird weather was caused by the radiation leakage from Japan. Da-da laughed. This is patently ridiculous. Radiation doesn't make weather. All ("all") that can do is pollute -- a lot -- for something like a thousand years. Or longer. Which is bad. But it doesn't make tornadoes. If it did, you would all be so hosed.

If you still aren't convinced, try to remember all those bazillions of nuclear tests (actually, there were 2000 -- TWO THOUSAND, krikey -- the lion's share of which were done in the air) that "civilized" countries conducted between 1945 and 1992. "Nuclear tests" is a euphemism for gigantic freaking nuclear explosions. BOOM. Two thousand of them. Did any of those create horrible tornadoes or bizarre cold or rain when it's supposed to be sunny? Nope. And those were nuclear bombs. They blew up all over the place and threw radioactive debris over the entire earth well over fifteen hundred times (some of the later tests were underground), much worse than anything you could ever imagine, and some of you are worried about Japanese radiation carried on the wind? Indeed, the radiation is terrible, and will cause massive problems, and might be carried by the wind, but the majority of the damage will most likely be regionalized. The earth is big, and cleans itself pretty well. It just takes time. Chernobyl occurred back in 1986, caused 800,000 deaths and toppled the former Soviet Union (so you might wonder who was behind it, hmm?), and you still can't go anywhere near it. The only good news there is that it doesn't cause weird weather.

One person brought up HAARP. Alas, until someone on the inside cracks, we'll never know what they're doing with HAARP. Ascribing weird weather and earthquakes and volcanoes to HAARP is premature, and ignores all the other stuff that's been going on, most notably with the sun. That said, the U.S. Government should turn that thing off, posthaste, as they have no idea what it can do. Da-da so wishes Tesla burned his notebooks before he died.

Perhaps because Da-da's always had change in his life, he accepts it pretty quickly and adapts more readily than some, but a lot of people are having problems getting their minds around what's happening with the earth. Da-da calls, "Weather 2.0." Nothing ever stays the same here on Earth 2.0, which should really be called Earth 47000000.0. The catastrophes of the past make this little change you're experiencing such an inconsequential trifle as to be laughable. Anyone recall the Permian-Triassic (P-T) Extinction? All of what is now Siberia -- which is BIG -- erupted all the way around its tectonic plate, throwing what's lovingly called a "curtain lava" event... an event you don't wanna see. Ever. It was sorta like this...

Imagine this, a mile high, all the way around Siberia.

...but the curtains were a mile high. Around an entire continent. For a thousand years. Ow. The P-T event killed 96% of all marine life and 70% of all terrestrial life and shortened baseball season something fierce. And you can't blame Monsanto or HAARP or the U.S. Government for this one (even though they probably used a time machine to mess things up, the bastards.) No, the earth has been whacking civilizations back to nothing all by its lonesome for longer than you've had hot dinners. Welcome to Perspective! It's certainly nothing to be afraid of, though. That's as silly as sitting around waiting for the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy (all galaxies are accretion discs for black holes) to eat you. Needless to say, it's gonna be awhile, so relax.

Back to the weather. Weatherwise, there's a good chance that the weather will never be what it once was. You might like it. You might not. This is certainly the case with weather, but not with radiation. Some things can be avoided. 

AIIEE! Run, Timmy, RUN! The glacier's gonna get you!