ednesday, and with no Tuesday night Kali (Gura had a poetry reading to attend in The City.), I'm at a loss about what to say. Sad how dependent upon hitting people in the head my blog has become. Dependent for blog material, I mean.

I'm also trying to get some fiction done tonight, so I'm using that as I usually do; as an excuse not to blog at great length. Of course me saying that is usually a sure sign that the blog is going to go about 8000 words that day, but I don't think that'll happen tonight.  And just to prove it, I'm going straight to the news. Down below is a ridiculous photo of me, and some other humor/news thing with mutilated cartoon captions.

I've also been meaning to mention that there may be bloggus-interruptus the first week of June, when I'll be down in San Diego. Dad's getting some minor back surgery done (of course I can say it's minor... it's not my back) and he wants me to be there while he's in the hospital, and then for a few days once he's back home and maybe unable to even get out of bed under his own power.  Mostly he just wants me to visit, and this is a good excuse for that, and since I can hardly refuse, off I go.

I should have plenty of writing time though, with nothing to do but hang around his house, visit him in the hospital, and do some stuff with mom. The question though is if I'll be able to churn out the fiction, as I hope, or if I'll just write ten thousand words of blog every day, the way I did over my Xmas vacation. I was always in the mood to write while in SD and Vegas over Xmas, but I couldn't get in the mood for fiction, so I just wrote about every little thing we did.  Hopefully this time I'll be more fictiony, and I'm sort of hoping that the boredom and quiet of being stuck in dad's house with him not there or resting after his surgery will force me to escape into the novel.

The question, when it comes to blog stuff, is whether I'll write it and save it until I get back, or if I'll post it from SD. Dad's got DSL in his house at last, and I'll be taking Malaya's laptop, so I could, in theory, update this page from there, or I could set up a blog and put a link from here to there for that week, or I could just email Malaya the updates and she'd paste them in and post them each night.  May you blog more frequently when you are on vacation.

Anyway, I'm not making firm plans yet since I'm not sure if I'll be writing at all, or if I'll be doing nothing but fiction, or what. I'll be leaving the house regularly though, either to do stuff with mom or to tour around the old SD stomping grounds. Not that I did much stomping when I lived there, and not that I have any nostalgia to do anything there now.

One thing I'm considering doing is some martial arts. There aren't any Kali schools doing anything remotely like what the one I belong to up here does, but there are some Arnis/Escrima schools, and of course dozens of other martial arts studios in the San Diego County area, with its three million residents to service. Anything I did there would be largely to get out of the house and get some exercise, but I am always curious about other forms and styles, and it would be interesting and might broaden my horizons. My teacher said I should/could try something out if I wanted to; it's not like I'm going to fall into some horrible habits from just one or two classes.  She did say to be careful though; that I might get everyone challenging me if I told them I was from another school.

That's never an issue in my school, since we're proud of our style and confident in it, and other people are always welcome to come and watch or participate. The experts in our style of Kali blend moves from every other discipline in and sort of Kali-ize them, and we like to play with people who have different styles to see the strengths and weaknesses of them. There's also not a lot of ego or testosterone flowing. Apparently this is not always the case with other schools, and as my Gura said and another friend agreed, some martial arts classes are very testosterone-filled, with lots of young guys who combine their penis-issues with an eagerness to punch things. Things like the noses of curious one-time visiting students who are taking other forms of martial arts.

I find that I feel no fear about possibly being whacked, thanks to the accidental near-knockout blow I took a couple of months ago, but with well under a year of Kali I'm certainly not ready to pit my skills against other martial artists, and even if I had Guru level skill, I wouldn't want to check out other forms in order to fight people. I wouldn't mind some sparring, but mostly I'd just like to see how they run class, how they learn new things, what their style looks like up close, and to see how they move, what sort of hits they work on, etc.  And while I don't want to do that enough to do it regularly up here, it's definitely an option while I'm bored in San Diego and dad's given me some spending money to amuse myself with while I'm there to nurse him back to health.

I'll post about that again before the time comes, since I've got some links to other Kali schools, with video, and it's amazing how totally different our Kali looks from theirs.

To the news.

Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction. But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?

Given the way most men are, this is a damn good thing, or the human race would have gone extinct long ago. *rimshot*

Continuing with the article...

...in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all. Rather, Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist. That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.

In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined. In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."

Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Lloyd pointed out. While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.

The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."

There is much disagreement with her conclusions though, and the surprisingly-long article details many other competing theories, the evolution of the ideas, and much more.

BERLIN (AFP) - Germans have stopped having children -- and the number of couples opting for a childless life is rising every year to the consternation of politicians and employers in the eurozone's biggest economy.

While figures released by the French government this month showed France's population could balloon from its current level of 60.2 million to 75 million by 2050, the United Nations predicts that Germany's is set to plummet from 82 million to 70.8 million in the same period.

The article discusses the issue from several angles, but never actually offers any solutions.

For many women however having children means abandoning their careers. Working mothers complain that all too often they are seen as "Rabenmutter", which translates as "cruel mothers" -- women who dump their kids in childcare so they can pursue their personal goals. Yet in a country where schools generally finish for the day at 1:30 pm, balancing work and children is a headache.

"Places in creches are hard to get, and expensive," said Andrea, 35, in the Brigitte chat room. "I just can't imagine myself having a child, staying at home and becoming financially dependent on my partner or the State."

The German government has pledged to create 230,000 daycare places by 2010 and the idea of extending the school day is under discussion in some regions. Germans also tend to be students longer than in other countries, with many still enrolled at university and college until they are at least 30.

The article never actually lists any birth numbers, showing that women are now having fewer babies, or having them later, or what. The article also never mentions immigration, which is the driving force in population growth or loss in most first world nations. Japan and Italy (and the UK and some other European countries as well, I believe) are having similar falling population issues, since their people are having fewer kids, and they don't have a lot of immigration.

The real problem with the falling or stagnating populations is that time passes and people get older and pretty soon you've got more and more retired people and fewer young people working and paying taxes to support government aid to the old folks. Kids are apparently very expensive to raise, but there it's lots of small purchases that drive the economy; clothing, food, toys, etc. Old people eat less, buy very few consumer items, and have large lump sum expenses like medical procedures. I'm not an economist, but young families with kids are apparently what really drive the economy of any nation, and lots of old retired people drag it down. Hence it's a problem for countries like Germany and Japan and others when people stop having kids.

We'd be in the same boat in the US, with women/couples waiting longer to start having kids, except that immigration is keeping our population growing, and young. I know half a dozen women in their late twenties, none of whom have kids and all of whom are considering having one or two in the semi-immediate future. None of their partners have any kids either though, so there's some obvious math there, with two people having one kid, when they need to have at least two just to break even.  Luckily for the better off and better educated portions of the US population, we've still got lots of poor people moving to this country, and lots of poor people here having lots of kids.  Someone's gotta keep all those Wal-Marts and McDonalds in business.

On second thought, do you really need to? I've never paid any attention to these comics at all, but as simple as they are, I could write them.  The fishing one is something like, "believing his stories," and the other is, "thinking of each other even when you're apart." On second thought, my second caption probably has too many words... it's harder than it looks!

Actually, "Love is harder than it looks." would be a hell of a caption... we just need a cartoon to fit it.  The alternative/dirty cartoon pretty much draws itself in this case, though.

Seriously, don't you just want to punch me? I saw fifty guys looking like this a night back when I worked at the stadium in San Diego, and I always wanted to punch them. Or at least trip them when they inevitably started walking sideways/backwards while shouting at their similarly-drunken friends.  The saddest part is that I probably wasn't even drunk, legally speaking, in this photo. We were wine-tasting, and while I tasted my fair share, I didn't have more than an ounce of anything, I drank it all a small sip at a time, and I was eating the whole time.

I'm definitely buzzed in this pic though, and it's a pity I can't show the whole image, since Malaya's standing beside me and she's got a grin almost as silly on her face as I have on mine. She's far cuter when she's tipsy too; her cheeks turn red less than halfway through a margarita, and she gets giggly. I just get sleepy, and my capacity isn't any greater than hers either; we are equally light-weight when it comes to alcohol consumption.

Fortunately, dad was driving all day and my fuzzy buzz wore off by dinnertime, since I was driving the hour and a half home from dad's hotel.