Does he follow the Catholic Church's stance against capital punishment, the Iraq War, and unversal health care? Doubtful. I'd check that, but it would require a mouse drag all the way to the top of this browser window to use the search engine and I'm not putting that much effort into it.

Back when Santorum still held elective office, he was an asshole then, too, and columnist Dan Savage ran a contest to create a definition of "santorum" to mess with search engine results. Known as Santorum's "Google problem", here's the winning reader submission:

Pronunciation: san-TOR-um, Function: noun, Etymology: Savage Love - 05/29/03

1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Former Senator Rick Santorum

Here's a political ad by Rick Santorum in which his right-now pollitical rival, Mitt Romney, gets sprayed by a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter:

Villain! This ad uses the overture to Carmen. Fool! Fiend! Carmen belongs to meeee!

The final image is a dead ringer for the image long at Santorum.com to keep stank all over his name.

Santorum is a weirdo!

Then ladies'd stand naked in line, and while blitzed on wine the fellas all'd hit them.

Later on ladies' names were drawn by men in a game to determine who later would schtup 'em.

Couples might bond, other times not gel, in either case they'd end up sticky.

While rollicking and violent, horrid and wrong, somehow that all ended as this edible Mickey.

The Valentine's cookie was sweet, decorated neat, and blended to smooth consistency.

Eating it made me sluggish and slow, hardly rarin' to go, and in the wild my rivals would pass me.

Would I end up behind down the Lupercalian line slapping laggard asses that didn't quite suit me?

I'd probably stay back, plan a selective attack based on hair, guessed-at smarts, self-esteem.

Or would I have thought "Sod it all. Ave, Venus!" and hope my card would lead to love at first sight?

All this mulling now and then while with a ravenous grin I chomped down on this corporate copyright.

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

She left the following voice mail on my cell phone late this afternoon while I was at work:

"I was wondering when you're coming home 'cause I'm super super super anxious to get an Apple ID really soon 'cause my friend wants to do Facetime with me, but I need a new Apple ID password you already know my phone number and, yeah. Bye."

Google Voice transcribes my cell phone voice mail messages. It interpreted the call:

"I was wondering When You're Going To Be home to say I'm super super super anxious tagged nap, but I do you really soon because my friend what to do face time with me. But I need a new lot like the password bloodied not bear and yeah."

Paid bills for an hour tonight, then having never used Facetime, got to work through a Facetime/Apple ID oddity/snag/feature. Great success! As daughter got into bed I spoke with her from my laptop to her iPod Touch and it was a funny 30 seconds. Should be fun next time a family member is out of town. Though Facetime doesn't seem to be as exciting and beloved as when it first launched with beautiful people with winning smiles engaged in touching, heart-rending chats during commercial breaks.

Moved over to my 11 y/o son's room, where he reported today was the first of THE TOPIC in school about the birds and the bees. Whole class. Coloring pictures of genitals with crayons. Funniest terms for genitals they've heard: "disco stick", "corn dog", "hot dog bun", "taco", "black hole", "where the sun don't shine" (last one my son's contribution). Acne. Body functions. More discussion tomorrow.

Less harrowing than in MY day. Boys and girls in separate rooms, watching animated films about amoral nature soon wreaking havoc and would completely betray our conception of ourselves and reality. "Whoah, my body will do WHAT when I'm asleep and I won't be able to do ANYTHING about it? People are laughing about hairy palms, now I am too, but I don't understand what they were saying about what DOESN'T cause hairy palms?"

You know, stuff that still rattles us and holds us in thrall to this day. However the report of this sex ed curriculum seemed a step forward for our species. My question: "During coloring, did anyone ask for the silver or gold crayon?" Son: "No, they gave us all the same limited selection."

I don't speak Italian, and am by no means classy, but I really liked the show. There are musical discernments I am far from being sensitive to, but Opera is sure-as-heck less daunting than I once thought. Plots are simple, and take forever to develop. But rapid plots are not opera's appeal. It's empathy and sensory experience.

Listening to live music can be superior to decades-old recordings. You're welcome for this free wisdom.The score to Madama Butterfly was less familiar than Carmen which I saw in late December. But while I've listened to Butterfly several times with good speakers and headphones, I was struck by how the music that comes across as cramped on a recording opens up with live orchestration. One thing to KNOW that, as most everyone who cares about music does, but another thing to EXPERIENCE that.

Voices were strong. The male lead character, B.F. Pinkerton, is a jerk who doesn't stick around. We're not supposed to like him, but I kept hoping he would break into Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" to at least TRY to win us over.

As it was, when it was time for curtain call, the long-suffering Cio-Cio San (nicknamed Madama Butterfly) had just taken her own life before our eyes. When the performer who played Pinkerton, the man who led to Cio-Cio San's despair, took the stage a crescendo of applause was supported by an undercurrent of playful booing. Very funny. Singer smiled. Must be part of the role.

The production was more accomplished than the Eugene Opera's Carmen (though I liked that show, too, and like Carmen more than Butterfly). At the Eugene Opera I did not see a single illuminated cell phone screen as the lights came down. In Portland, bright rectangles were all over the place. So, point to Eugene for being classier!

Top image is from a gallery of more-than-lurid image macros with Gosling from Digital Moms Blog (another caption from the collection: "Hey Mom...I think Moms are hot" and they range from laughable to mundane to troubling). Lower image is one I made this morning.

Not a fan of spouses/partners calling each other "Mom" or "Dad" or "Mother or "Father". If people want to do that during role play, go ahead (post photos/video!). I can understand that partners using "Mom" or "Dad" comes from referring a kid to the other adult (e.g. "Go ask your Dad"), then it becomes an arch label, then sticks. Still, eww.

Both Gosling and Deschanel are born in 1980. Both seem intelligent. Gosling has a "I'm almost an adult" persona. Deschanel's persona is "I may be a grown-up, at some date of my choosing. Or I may remain pixie-ish and the kind of spinster who names all the spiders in my home."

And Gosling, veteran of the New Mickey Mouse Club with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera (and some other N'Sync dude, right? dignity keeps me from researching that) has likely witnessed things while peristalted through the intestines of the Orlando entertainment system, dark things, of a nature hopefully few of us can imagine.

Saw this on the internet, and it seemed kind of wrong-ish, and wanted to ponder its wrong-ness by turning the genders around. Thoughts?

Cupcake, cheesecake.Director David Lean's film before Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, is my favorite movie (don't tell Singin' in the Rain, m'kay?) and watching Zhivago (same composer, a lead, director, screenwriter) always gets me contrasting art that works (Lawrence) to art that falls flat (Zhivago). I'll probably never write my thoughts out about Lawrence, there's not enough internet space for all the slop that would pour out, but it's interesting that Lawrence has no speaking roles for women, and the only time women are heard are ululations of women sending their men off to battle. It IS an army movie in the Middle East and I don't recall T.E. Lawrence mentioning women in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Oh, shit. Right. Zhivago. See? It's easy to get rolling about Lawrence. Staunching that gusher and getting back on topic...

Producer Carlo Ponti wanted Sophia Loren to play Lara. Lean thought her too tall. Julie Christie was hired instead. And I can't make up my mind about Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago's wife and cousin. In many shots she seems alert and intelligent, others like a ninny. And her appearance changes from gaspingly cute to weird-looking.

Christie was already a notable actor and beauty, Chaplin would become a prominent actor and had already been a teen model. Like any good devotee, I demand consistency from objects of worship. Fluctuating levels of beauty and presence are confusing.

Lean decided to make the character of Yuri Zhivago an observer, to Sharif's initial frustration. He was to take it all in, hardly emoting, but he and the audience would know Zhivago would express himself through poetry. Don't worry, Lean assured Sharif, despite the beautiful spectacles and actors emoting all around him, at the end of the movie they will think most about Sharif as Zhivago.

"[The novel] Doctor Zhivago is a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelieveable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences." - Vladmimir Nabokov

Would it shock you to know that Doctor Zhivago is not a documentary? Turns out the scenes in the ice palace home were not done in a ice palace that just happened to be there. The ice effects were done with beeswax coating the set, the drippings flash-hardened by being sprayed with ice water.

Speaking (okay typing, you stickler!) of fake cold, and fake heat. Something about the movie remains unconvincing. The actors don't quite click. I may have started to put my finger on it.

It has to do with too much emphasis on the look of things. How the shot is lit, in focus, holding a pose as if for a movie still. In the throes of passion, or deep feeling, the leads don't comport themselves the way people do. Too many shots of the gorgeous Julie Christie as Lara being lit achingly right:

And, with Sharif's Yuri Zhivago relegated to being an observer, the movie is a parade of sustained white glints of light in his moist eyes. It's not subtle. It's distracting. A simulcra of a highly attuned human and artist shown so deliberately he seems a falsely-moved mannequin. Take this still which is the shot right after the one of Christie above:

Feeling the passion? Neither are they, but they are optimally lit, and Sharif's sleeve is smoothed out just so.Omar Sharif is a great actor. Julie Christie is a great actor. It's a fault of the direction and cinematography. Has David Lean done a convincing love scene? It's a mood killer, and irreparably harms a grand melodrama like Zhivago. Any-hoo, having pinned that down I'm going to sleep knowing the world is a better place having helped us all get more precise about a supreme piece of middling entertainment.

I know he's recorded a lot more songs in his long career. I recall an odd love duet with his daughter. What trips me out about "Calendar Girl" and "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" is the forced cherubism. "Though sad inside, I shall for the sake of commerce and Tin Pan Alley heave a superhuman effort into PROJECTING MIRTH THOUGH ITS FORCE MAY REND TIME/SPACE ASUNDER!"

Let's focus on his shout out to "December" in "Calendar Girl". He uses the word "'neath". He could have used "beneath" and it would have still flowed. But no, he formally sat at a table, wrote the word "'neath" on the music sheet and thought "How winningly informal and crafty. I shall keep it."

He gives out a "Whoo!" at the start of the bridge (at 1:26 in the clip below) that is hilarious. "Holy Christmas on a cracker, I got so much groove I don't know what to do but whoop in exultation!"

Drafting this on my phone, its AutoCorrect suggested "Meat" for "Neil", "Defamation" for "Sedaka", "Shop" for "Whoo". Good summary, phone! Somewhere out there my smartphone has a funnier, more concise blog than mine.