October 2001 Archives
When I was younger my favorite movie was Stand By Me. Something about the camaraderie and experiences that the characters shared appealed to me. And although I was always partial to River Phoenix's character,
Wil Wheaton is now a closer second as I learn more about him on
his very own website, which he runs himself. His interests and geekhood are inline with my own and this
interview on slashdot confirms most of it. Wil Wheaton I salute you!
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I am posting this from a
Minnesota Wild game...from
my phone. I feel like kicking my own ass right now.
Much of today has been spent most non-productively downloading and viewing many a
Celebrity Jeopardy skit from Saturday Night Live. I still cannot find the latest one with Sean Connery, Robin Willams (Jimmy Fallon), Cathrine Zeta-Jones (Lucy Lui), but any of these are liable to bring tears to my eyes if I try to make it through the whole skit.
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On a sad note for me, I had my first bit of, what I can only describe as "hate mail" via my site in over 5 years of running a website. It was regarding some of my views on the job our president is doing. Politics seem to divide people and affect people much more profoundly than many other issues and characteristics seem to do. Why is that? Why do people care so much about the minor differences between America's Democratic and Republican parties? They really are minor yet people can get so worked up about things. Politics, religion, and race in America tend to cause the most conflicts yet really matter very little when it comes to two people getting together and talking about issues facing the world today.
Members of the Pumpkin Liberation Army are fed up with the misuse of pumpkins and are doing something about it, feeding the hungry, according to this
news blurb at Ananova
Cameron has been on quite a roll latley over at
Camworld. I love his site. So much information, so little sleep.
Bush is funny. Somehow I still find humor in him while he is delivering speeches that I sorely wish were being delivered by Clinton or any other man of reasonable intelligence and charisma. For these times require seriousness, intelligence, patience, and true leadership. Even if I knew Clinton was full of shit, I didn't care because he could charm the habit off a nun (and probably has). Furthermore, he could inspire people with his words, words he seemed to own and take to heart.
Over the last couple weeks I couldn't help but feel twinges of guilt here and there as I was gaggin on what the administration, and the media, and what seemed like everyone was telling me I should think about these times we find ourselves in. Should I really not criticize this man who I think is an utter bufoon just because he has the (mis)fortune of being my President at this time. Am I to blame for my lamenting that America has no political leaders, only people with political ambitions. Is it too much to ask for a politician to have a reason for being elected? An idea? A passion? Is it enough now just to want the job? Do we have no hope of ever being inspired again? Do we really all believe that a violent war is the best way to stop the peoples of the world from hating us?
Mark Moreford puts me at ease some in his article
Evil Evildoers of Evil: How to feel calmly patriotic and yet not the slightest bit reassured by Bush & Co. [via
camworld] In it he assures that I can be proud of my country's strengths and the freedoms it affords me without being "unpatriotic". I can still criticize our anti-leaders because my nation still offers that choice to me. If we ever lose that, we will have truly lost a war, indeed.
Ah the beauty of the season's first snow. It is a beautiful site, if only it weren't in the wrong season. Today officially began the start of winter here in Minnesota, or what I like to call the bundling season where no one is seen out of doors for the next 6 months. It's not that I hate winter, I just don't like the duration of it here in Minnesota. I would like a nice white Christmas followed by a sleepy January but when March comes I am ready for spring. And don't get me started on the countless white Halloweens and Thanksgivings we have had over the years.
I purchased
The Lord of the Rings at Barnes and Noble (can you believe their site doesn't even have this?) in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the way down to Phoenix last week and listened to all 13 cassettes on the trip there and back. This was the 13-tape BBC dramatized recording of the Tolkien masterpiece. And can you believe that this was
abridged from the original master recording of 38 tapes!? There was a cast of at least 2 dozen, including Ian Holm as Frodo and an orchestra and sound department which added to the feeling and background of this classic tale. It was a great way to indoctrinate my wife to these books before I drag her to the movie 3-4 times.
Each time I go on road trip in the U.S. I notice a few things and I thought I would share some of my observations and random thoughts with you.
- First off, the U.S. is a huge country with so many wide open spaces. Wow!
- Most of the population of the U.S. lives in small towns and suburbs and not in the 20 big cities of the nation.
- Most places are much more similar than they are different. They have the same restaurants, stores, zoning configurations, etc.
- Minnesota has fewer good (some would say none) radio stations than other cities of similar size.
- People drive poorly everywhere, but nowhere is worse than in Phoenix, Arizona.
- On a related note, when you factor in these drivers, the speeds we often go on the freeways, and all of the assorted critters that like to get to the other side of the road - driving is very dangerous business - it would be really easy to die doing it.
- There are not too many fast food chains - in fact there are very few.
- It is very difficult to find vegetarian-friendly fast food. (How many time's can you have a veggie sub at Subway or a 7-layer burrito at Taco Bell on one trip?
- Krispy Kreme is the best doughnut chain in the country.
- most people drive in the right lane and only use the left to pass. Those who don't do this, suck.
Here is also some bonus commentary on the various states I visited/drove through this last week:
Minnesota - home base, I am sort of biased. It is like the Iowa with trees, lakes, and industry.
South Dakota - flat boring first half with a nice change up for the western side (+ Wall Drug and all its signs)
Wyoming - flat and boring on one side, more rugged on the other - I should have driven further west.
Colorado - I could live here - well, in the middle part: Boulder, Denver, etc. not the south which is too much like New Mexico and not the north or east which are too much like Wyoming or Nebraska.
New Mexico - stark, would like to see more of Albuquerque, Taos, and Santa Fe
Arizona - pretty, bad place to try to avoid a semi rollover, nice police officers who only give warnings for going 95 in a 75.
Nebraska - Flat, boring - who has ever heard of thunderstorms and tornados in October?
Iowa - poor Iowa. does anyone ever even get off Highway's 80 or 35 except to get gas?
I am off again. This time for a drive across this land. Out west across the Dakotas, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. There is a point to my voyage - my baby sister is getting married - but hopefully the getting there will be a great experience as well. We plan to camp in the mountains and desert, stop at roadside diners, and do all the other fun things associated with road trips (the 3000+ miles of driving isn't really one of those though).
Here are a couple sites to waste some time at:
howgoodinbed.com is a study on how body types and personality traits can predict how good someone will be in bed. and a site my dad could easily be a part of:
menwholooklikekennyrogers.com (pretty self explanatory I think)
10 Things to Know About the Middle East [source:
dooce] See also:
10 Things to Know about U.S. Policy in the Middle East,
U.S. Policy Toward Political Islam, and
The Falwell/Robertson/Bin Laden Quiz.
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Needing something to love lately I look no further than the palm of my hand to see my
Kyocera Smartphone with a built in Palm organizer. Sure it is a little on the big side (but certainly much smaller than carrying a Palm Pilot and a phone) but it is packed with powerful, cool features, has a great interface and is very usable.
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My vegetarianism is going well (thanks for asking) I am now going on a month and a half with little or no meat (so I ate some fish and seafood) and it is going well. I don't miss anything yet. I think that the vegetarian selections at most restaurants are actually much better than most of the meat-filled ones.
Sometimes the truth is funnier (or scarier) than fiction. My
previous post had some commentary about the comments made by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer:
"Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
It seems like the
the Onion a site better known to rely heavily on satire that fact seems to think so too. Its latest edition includes an article called
Freedoms Curtailed In Defense Of Liberty that is a little too close to true for me. I, sadly, believe everything said in the article could be said by some of our "leaders" in Washington.
I have been meaning to point to some of the web's best satire sites and now I have the perfect segue:
Landover Baptist Church
Whitehouse.org
McSweeney's
Chaser
Sweet Fancy Moses
The Satyr
Herd of Sheep
SatireWire
Going to the movies by myself is something I don't often do. (but I am gradually losing my inhibitions about it) However, going to a movie just to see the trailer of another movie I really am looking forward to is something I have only done
once before. As it turns out the new trailer for
The Fellowship of the Ring wasn't playing at tonight's showing of
Zoolander as I was hoping but I did see a preview for a movie I am really excited to see as well: Wes Anderson's latest movie,
The Royal Tenenbaums.
If you have not seen
Rushmore, why not? Go
rent buy it now. It is very good. The Royal Tenenbaums looks like (or at least is being marketed to look like) another Rushmore. And it too, looks very good. It stars Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Bill Murray, and Danny Glover (wow) and with music from The Beatles, Nick Drake, The Ramones, Elliot Smith among others it is hard not to see why this movie will be great.
This year has been a pretty bad drought as far as movies go. It looks like that is looking to change in the last couple months of the year. Of course there is Fellowship of the Rings and The Royal Tenenbaums, but I am looking forward to the following as well:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
Bandits,
K-PAX,
Monsters, Inc. (the last 3 tend to just have certain aspects of them I find interesting and so, would see)
I know it is "all the rage" to praise the job our president is doing, and that many think to do otherwise is downright unpatriotic, but I just can't help myself. I have really laid off George W. since his inauguration, but I've had all I can stand. George W, you couldn't inspire confidence in a golden retriever. Why must Americans look to their European allies' leaders for inspiration and *leadership* in these times. With all his faults, Bill Clinton would have been much more inspiring during these last 3 weeks. I see him as being very Gulianni-esque in this situation. I am so sad at the state of leaders in America in general.
I have sensed around me and indeed felt in myself, an underlying sense of anger and discord recently. After reading many other web log sites, I see that many of my peers are feeling angry as well.
First a disturbing bit of
backward thinking . [source:
if then else] It seems a senator from Kansas believes that if woman's suffrage was to be voted on today that she would vote against it. Putting aside the lunacy of the situation on which she could even vote for a woman's right to vote - her statements make me sad. Her claim is that the 19th Amendment was the beginning of the erosion of American family values.
I get frustrated by discussions such as these, not because of the merits (or lack of merits) of the respective points, but rather the futility and wastefulness of such discussions. Energy should be expended in forward looking thinking. We cannot go back to the good old days because our society would reject those days (that really weren't all that good in many ways anyway) and because there are much better things in our future if we can just change our perceptions and our behavior.
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And now something a bit more personal. Reading
Mark's recent post about packing up his belongings and moving on in life - selling his home, taking an extended vacation, and most likely moving away when he returns. I hate "losing" friends more than anything else in life. But more than my feelings of loss, I feel left out or left behind. Not by anyone but by life. Tremendous opportunities exist for me to travel the world and stop anywhere I wish. I long for the will to pick up and change my life. I would sell many of my things I have accumulated, store some more and just take off with my wife (I think we would have to take
our dog though) and simply go from place to place, working as needed to live, but not living to work. We could meet people from all parts of the earth and spend as much time as we could enjoying ourselves and the company of others. Is this just a dream? I grow impatient already and I am young. I have time. Or maybe my impatience is due to my youth. Will I lose this over time, allowing myself to get lulled into complacency? I can hear the lullaby already. Sure it sounds soothing, but if I listen too long I may end up falling asleep.
I
linked to
an article at Salon a couple days ago and just reread it again today.
It comments on how we need to have a democratic approach now more than ever and that the country should have consensus-building through dialog and not through the government and media telling the public how they should feel about the events of Sept. 11 and about what needs to be done now. Here is a quote from the end of the article that I find to be true.
In the end, it won't be military superiority that determines the outcome of this war. As our implacable fundamentalist foes have told the world, this is a war of values. We cannot win by sacrificing ours. If democracy and freedom are to win over the forces of terror and theocracy, they first must flourish at home. - David Talbot, Salon
I am offline for a couple days and they release the
first season of the Simpsons on DVD! It has all the episodes of the first season as well as unaired footage, sketches, BBC feature “America’s First Family” and the Tracy Ullman short “Good Night”. All that for only $27.84 and free shipping - that's the best DVD value I have seen in a while.
