So nice to see my "daughter"

My "daughter" Alyssa is here with her mom, visiting. It is so nice to see them!

A sense of impending doom

I am not getting a warm fuzzy from my laptop. A month ago, the fan began squeaking. A tech came out and replaced it. Then the power button died, so I couldn't even turn it on. Dell talked me through replacing the keyboard (a "customer-serviceable" item). Now the touchpad and pointer have died. Reinstalling the driver did nothing, since the driver apparently is still present (though I cannot find any controls for it). The tech says he's going to replace my motherboard.

Sigh. I can't afford to have this thing crap out on me in the last month of my project. January is the big push to get everything done. February we train. March we go-live.

Argh.

Back from the cold

What a wonderful time we had in the frozen north, in the little town of Woodstock, Illinois! It had been three years since we had been to Chicago, and, hmmm, maybe 12 years since I personally had been to St. Louis (a short three-day side trip to see yet more friends and "relatives"). Some things had changed, others had remained the same, but the thing that struck me the most was how much I enjoyed seeing family. Martians are not particularly family-oriented, yet it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces, and just to be, to exist in their company without needing to really do anything. Except, it seems, to consume enough food to sustain Luxembourg for a year. Urf. I am still full, days later.

(One of Woodstock's claims to fame is that it was the location where the movie "Groundhog Day" (1993, Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell) was filmed. It is a hilarious movie, one of my favorites. There is a plaque on the sidewalk downtown where, for one scene in the movie, Bill Murray stepped off the curb and went into a pothole up to his knees. It is a delightful little town, one where time and progress conspired to make it beautiful and loving, instead of tired and faded like so many other rural towns in the United States.)

My darling wife and I often have our nieces and nephews come visit us. We invite them to bring their friends, and they do. Over the years, we have adopted several of them, so it was wonderfully gratifying when they all showed up on Wednesday night to have dinner with us and to play viciously competitive card games of Spoons and Blackjack into the wee hours of the morning. It was nice to see all of "our" kids together. My, how they have grown! So much energy, vitality, and potential, all in one room. Just watching them, we felt that we could see the future. It's a bright, happy place.

I have many photos, some of which I will post when I have a moment. Now that we are back in the jungle, we have other family coming to visit tomorrow for several days. We had to run errands today and prepare for their arrival, including buying a large quantity of illegal fireworks with which to celebrate the New Year. (To purchase the fireworks is not illegal. To use them is. If I am caught and/or chastised, I will plead insanity. And/or blame my neighbors, most of whom seem to be similarly insane.)

Off for Christmas

Tomorrow I'm going to Chicago for a week with the in-laws. Wish me luck. ;-)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!

Yellow water, Part 3

Bob the Water Guy, with his vigorous flush of the system, cured our water problem. The water is clear again. Yayyyyyy!

But now that we have two pumps instead of one, and each one pulls 11.5 amps on the 15-amp circuit that they share, when they both run at the same time... pop. And the water pressure drops to zero. Then yours truly has to schlep out into the cold dampness to reset the breaker.

So now John the Electricity Guy is coming tomorrow (hopefully) to fix THAT problem.

Sigh.

Stuck in the 70s

"Salvage 1" (1979) was a silly, one-season tv show starring Andy Griffith as Harry, a junkyard owner who dreams of building a rocket to go to the moon, pick up all the discarded spacecraft junk there, bring it back and sell it here. And so he does. It was a wonderful show, an inspiring show. Sure, it's 1970s kitsch. Who cares?

Salvage 1 intro

Richard Jordan is in it also. He also played Dr. Jeffrey Pelt in "The Hunt for Red October" (1990), the smarmy guy who runs the intelligence briefings and says that as a politician, he's a liar and a cheat, and that when he's not kissing babies, he's stealing their lollipops. A great scene. He also played Dirk Pitt in "Raise the Titanic" (1980), which I never saw, but I have read all of the Clive Cussler books featuring Dirk Pitt. Wonderful potboiler novels. Predictable, but wonderful.

In Search Of

Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock on "Star Trek") hosted a program in the late 1970s and early 1980s called "In Search Of." It was a bit like "Unsolved Mysteries," but focused mostly on really weird stuff, like ghosts and UFOs and Easter Island and the Loch Ness Monster. I liked it a lot.

Lately the theme music has been stuck in my head. Why, 25 years later, it comes back to haunt me, I don't know.

"In Search Of" intro

Stuck in my head - Duelling Banjos

I never watched "Deliverance" (1972) all the way through. It's dark and scary and icky. But there's a great scene where Ronny Cox (who also played bad guy Dick Jones in "RoboCop," good guy Lt. Bogomil in the "Beverly Hills Cop" movies, bad guy Vilos Cohaagen in "Total Recall," and a recurring role as Senator Robert Kinsey in "Stargate SG-1") meets Lonnie, a retarded hillbilly boy (played by local resident Billy Redden) at a rural gas station in the mountains of Georgia. He tries to bond with the kid by playing the guitar, even though the kid clearly doesn't like him from the start. Billy Redden has a banjo. Ronny Cox plays the guitar at him, and finally Billy starts playing the banjo back. The result is the misnamed "Dueling Banjos" tune, which won the Grammy award in 1974 for Best Country Instrumental Performance.



Billy Redden couldn't fake dislike for Ronny Cox, but he really didn't like Ned Beatty, the overweight guy who also played Lex Luthor's (Gene Hackman's) sidekick in the Superman movies in the late 1970s. So the director got Ned Beatty to step close to Billy at the end of this scene, and that's why Billy looks away when Ronny talks to him after they finish playing the song.

Director Tim Burton liked Billy's strange appearance, and so he actually tracked Billy down at Billy's restaurant, the Cookie Jar Cafe, in Clayton, Georgia in 2002 to get him to appear in Burton's 2003 film, "Big Fish" as the banjo-playing welcomer in the ghostly town of Spectre. It's funny, because at least in 1972, Billy couldn't play the banjo at all. They had another player crouch behind him and reach around him and play for him, and the camera angles help hide the fact that it's not Billy playing.

Nevertheless, this tune has been stuck in my head for the last four days. I have no idea why.

I have always loved the banjo. I would like to learn to play, someday. I will never be as good as the player in this clip, but perhaps I can be passably good. I used to play the guitar. Banjo is not so different.

And while "Deliverance" portrays mountain people as inbred and dangerous, I must say, generally they're very nice. I have been to places such as the one in this film, and I have met people who were very much like the people in this clip. But they are nice people. And the mountains are beautiful.

Ornaments!

The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E. I like the shape of this one.


Sulu, Spock and Kirk listen to Khan taunt them from the hijacked U.S.S. Reliant in Star Trek II. Ricardo Montalban's voice is great in the sound clips in this ornament.


The U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656. I think this one just lights up.

The space station Deep Space Nine. I never liked this show much, but I loved Louise Fletcher playing Kai Winn, the Bajoran religious leader. She was delightfully evil, even better than her role as Nurse Ratchet in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975).

The U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701. There's something timeless about this shape. Ba ba bumm, ba ba ba ba bummmmm....

The shuttlecraft Galileo, from the NCC 1701. This was the first Hallmark Magic Ornament (talking/light-up), at least for Star Trek. It's a classic.

Darth Vader's TIE fighter, from "Star Wars: Episode IV". The best episode, in my humble opinion. They could have stopped with that one, and avoided wasting a lot of money and time on the sequels.

Scotty, Kirk and Spock in the transporter room. It shimmers like the real transporter, and has the sounds too. I love this one. I could listen to the transporter whine for hours. It's so musical.

Luke Skywalker's X-Wing.

This is one of the shuttlecraft from Deep Space Nine. It talks in Commander Worf's voice. This is pre-Defiant. Once the Defiant (NX-74205) came along, Worf got to fly that one a lot. It was the first true warship the Federation had. Heavy phaser cannons, massive photon torpedoes, incredible speed and a very small size. I think they should have built a LOT of those. ;-) I think I have a Defiant ornament somewhere.

The lunar lander from the Apollo missions. It talks with Buzz Aldrin's voice.

Dorothy and the gang speak with the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! it yells. It has three or four dialogue clips. And it lights up and flashes. No fire, though, not like in the movie. Darn.

A lighthouse. There's a whole series of these, but I was content with one. Its beacon glows, bright and dim, bright and dim.

The Borg Queen taunts Captain Picard as Locutus. I don't think this scene ever really took place - they're mashing up two or three separate plotlines. But it's representative of events in the Star Trek: Next Generation series. I love watching Kyra Sedgwick in "The Closer" - she played the Borg Queen a couple times. Alice Krige played her most of the rest of the time. That whole animated claw-blouse, digging into her flesh to hold itself on... ick.

This is where Dorothy accidentally melts the Wicked Witch of the West by throwing water on her. The witch screams and sinks down into the floor. Great stuff.


Spock and Kirk leap through the Guardian of Forever, in "The City On The Edge Of Forever," the one where Kirk goes back to 1930s Chicago and falls in love with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). One of the best episodes. The Guardian talks in this ornament, with a couple dialogue clips from the episode.

Our new yacht

It's always been my dream to own a boat. That's one of the reasons that I wanted to live near the water, since generally it's easier to enjoy a boat when there's water to put it in.

I've noticed that most people who own powerboats tend to let them sit on their trailers in the yard, especially since gas has gotten so expensive. The few people I know who have sailboats never take them out. The bigger the boat, the more likely it is to get silted into the canal where it's moored, until you need a dredge to come and dig it out. I think that's very funny.

So I've scaled back my boat dreams, from a 45-foot twin-engined Sea Ray, to this.

LOL! No, not really. My darling wife has always wanted a little rowboat to put plants in, and make it a little bed in the front garden. We'll even put up a little lighthouse, with little wooden pier pilings, and we'll tie the boat to it. We've seen other people do that, and it looks totally kitschy and cute. We found this in someone's trash the other night, so we tossed it in the back of the truck and brought it home. It's only about 10 feet long, made of fiberglass, and it's falling apart and isn't seaworthy... but it's certainly garden-worthy. My wife is quite happy.

I will continue to dream of a real, working boat. But as I get older, the need for such expensive toys grows progressively weaker. There's a guy a few blocks away with a little 14-foot twin-console runabout with a 90-horse motor. The price says either $300 or $500 or $800 (he changed it more than once) so I haven't asked him about it. At any of those prices, you can be sure it doesn't run, and it might not even be seaworthy. But I might ask him about it anyway. It would look so much better sitting in my yard instead of his.

Beach walk

We got to walk on the beach the other day, for the first time in a month.

The pelicans were having a feeding frenzy out on the sand bar. Splash!


We found a bunch of these clear blobs. They all are about an inch to an inch-and-a-half in diameter. One website theorizes that they are the results of jets dumping fuel over the ocean. We think that they are a variety of hydromedusa, a small jellyfish that feeds on plankton. Hydromedusae normally have tentacles, but as with most jellyfish, by the time they wind up on the beach, they've lost their tentacles to the surf or to other animals feeding on them, leaving just a transparent jelly blob.


I generally use a stick to poke dead things. My wife, ever the scientist, picks them up.


Beautiful patterns in the sand.


Pretty rocks.


A variety of ghost crab. This one has an unusual pattern of spots.

MORE decorations...

My darling wife has redone the guest bedroom. It looks very cozy.






We also got all our trees up!


Our new nine-foot artificial tree. My wife worked for days to string lights on it. I put all the ornaments on it. Star Trek: Original Series, Star Trek: Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise, some of the Star Trek movies, Star Wars Episodes 1 thru 6, The Wizard of Oz... it's a big mashup. When we turn the tree on, all the ornaments light up and talk and move. It is a bit noisy.


A Barbie tree that does double-duty as our pink flamingo tree. It suits.


Twin aluminum trees from the 1950s (original). We found these at the Salvation Army, I think. Practically new, in the original boxes with their 1950s lettering. Honestly, people just give stuff away and never know what it's worth. We just like 'em cuz they're purty.

Murder in Mississauga

I lived and worked for most of a year in Mississauga, Ontario (a suburb of Toronto). It's a nice place, pretty much. Lots of Muslims, lots of mosques. A bit of tension between the majority white Canadians and the Muslim immigrants. (Well, immigrants are the majority in Mississauga these days, I think.) But a nice place all the same. Nicer than some other suburbs of Toronto, which get made fun of all the time on the Canadian comedy channel on XM radio. Great mall at Square One down on Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe. Always something to do around there.

Events like these don't help the public-relations image of Muslim immigrants in Mississauga, though, where Muhammed Parvez, 57, is in jail after being charged with murder for killing his 16-year-old daughter Aqsa on Monday because she wouldn't wear her hijab. The coroner called it "neck compression." It sounds like strangulation to me. Mr. Parvez has been denied bail, and Aqsa's 26-year-old brother Waqas has been charged with obstructing police.

I think Mr. Parvez is going to learn rather quickly that if you're going to live in another country, you must abide by their laws, not yours. And he will learn that lesson while being slowly crushed among the very slow-grinding gears of the Canadian legal system.

All of this has gotten exactly zero airtime in the United States. I only heard about it because I keep tabs on Canada, having lived there. But it's disappointing all the same. We expect violence in the United States because we are rowdy and rambunctious. We expect calm in Canada because Canadians are generally placid and polite, compared to their redneck cousins to the south. Things like "honor killings" (an annoying euphemism) are un-Canadian, if that is a word. They have no place in a civilized society. In Canada, being more civilized than most, it is all the more shocking.

Yellow water Part 2

Bob the Water Guy came by today.

I think he's really sick of us by now. But he is EVER so patient.

He figured out that the resin tank was somehow not sucking the Iron-Out solution into itself well enough to kill the iron. So he put the timer on a special setting, pulled the hose off of it, stuck it in a bucket of solution of Iron-Out, and let it suck the bucket dry. No excuse for not getting Iron-Out into the resin tank this time.

It seems to have helped. He had us run the bathtubs at full blast... all sorts of reddish-black crud came out of the resin tank and the pipes in the concrete foundation of the house. Hmmmm.

He said to give it a few weeks, and our water should be clear again. Already it's much better. Bob was appalled at the crap that came out of our pipes. So were we.

The Farm

This one is Pachelbel's Canon set to a funky beat. It's about the 1914 Christmas Truce between the British and the Germans in World War I.

The Farm, "All Together Now"

The Streets

Ever buy an album because you heard one song on it, and you really liked that song, and the rest of the album was complete crap?

This is one of those albums.

Great song, though.

The Streets, "When You Wasn't Famous"

Too many parties

Monday lunch was the Christmas party for the local garden club. I am an honorary member since I am often the only spouse who shows up. I lift heavy things for them. It was a yummy lunch, with real china and silverware; no paper plates and plastic cups for these ladies.

Tuesday night was the Christmas party for the Native Plant Society. Paper plates, potluck, but yummy. And a nice silent auction! They had a bat house for auction, but they wanted $40. I can build my own bat house for that. And bats are finicky - they generally don't roost in houses like birds do. They like their hollow trees and eaves and things. We want to encourage bats to hang around our house, because they eat mosquitoes. But they won't hang around just because we put up a bat house for them. You have to have good-quality bugs. And a lot of them.

Tonight was a Christmas party at our house, for our friends and neighbors. We had a nice crowd. We had a ton of food and wine (we don't drink). We didn't have many leftovers, which is good. We had a nice time. And I have a date to go fishing with one friend, and to go shooting with another.

I'm about partied out. Urf. I ate too much.

A reason to carry a sledgehammer

This gigantic bug accosted me as I stepped out the front door today.


"Them's eatin' size!" some of my friends would say.

I gave him a quarter to go away.

This time, someone WAS prepared...

Years ago now, I moved away from Denver, Colorado, partly to follow a dream, and partly to escape the big-city crime. I carried a gun routinely there. I still do, but now I don't have to. It makes a difference to me.

Matthew J. Murray of Englewood (a Denver suburb), a 24-year-old son of a prominent neurologist, attacked two religious sites on Sunday. One was the Youth With a Mission school in Arvada (north Denver), and another was at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs (the next big city south of Denver, 60 miles away).

He had been kicked out of the Youth With a Mission school, which is a religious training school for teaching people how to be missionaries overseas. He had been sending the school hate mail. Shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, he tried to spend the night at a Youth With a Mission dormitory and was refused. He pulled out a gun, shot four people, killing two, and got away.

Twelve hours later, he went to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and opened fire in the entrance foyer as services were letting out, killing two teenaged girls and wounding their father before a female volunteer security guard shot and killed him.

Thank goodness someone was armed in that church. Simply because you're in a house of God does not mean that you are safe from the evil of men. That's why when I do go to church, I usually take my licensed, legally-concealed weapon with me. My fellow parishioners don't care, because most of them don't know. (That's the point of a concealed weapon, see. The ones who do know are also carrying.) God doesn't care. I would like to think He's happy that I'm going to church.

This wonderful woman saved many lives by being prepared. She deserves the gratitude of all seven thousand people who were at that church on Sunday for taking the steps to get the training and to shoulder the responsibility to protect herself and those around her.

It's easy to sneer and say, "oh, the world would be much safer if we banned all guns." Unlikely, based on the experiences of Britain and Australia, which both banned most guns in the last decade and have seen soaring violent crime as a result. The criminals keep their guns, while the law-abiding citizens turn theirs in. Do the math. (I know some people can't. So here's some numbers below that show the value of bothering to protect yourself.)

The events of the past week notwithstanding, violent crime is down in the United States. Violent crime rates in 2004-2005 were lower than any time since 1976, and this is AFTER the Clinton gun ban lapsed, when critics predicted widespread bloodbaths with "assault rifles." Crime victim surveys indicate that violent crime is at a 31-year low.

Forty of the 50 United States now permit individuals to carry concealed weapons. Since 1991, 23 states have adopted Right-To-Carry, and the number of privately-owned guns has risen by nearly 70 million. Because of that, violent crime is down 38% (the criminals are afraid to attack people, because they are afraid they will be killed. Instilling fear in criminals is a good thing.) In 2005, Right-To-Carry states had lower violent crime rates, on average, compared to the rest of the country. Their total violent crime was lower by 22%; murder, 30% lower; robbery, 46% lower; and aggravated assault, 12% lower). The seven states with the lowest total violent crime rates, and 11 of the 12 states with the lowest murder rates are all Right-To-Carry states. (http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=18)

I hope that female volunteer security guard gets the recognition and the commendation that she deserves. She sets a good example for everyone.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

We're big kids at heart, so we like a Christmas family-oriented movie. We hoped "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" would fill the bill.

Nope.

Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) is a very old toymaker, some 243 years old. Is he magic? We don't know. He's dying. Why? Because he's run out of all the pairs of his favorite shoes that he bought in Tuscany some unspecified number of years ago. It's time for him to go, he says.

Mahoney (Natalie Portman) is a gifted pianist who's trying to write a concerto and can't finish it. Meanwhile she works at Magorium's toy store. Is she magic? She says no. Magorium wants to leave the toy store to her, and she doesn't want it.

The store is alive, or possessed, like the hotel in "The Shining," but in a good way. The store is magic, we're pretty sure. I find it vaguely creepy. The walls groan and change colors. At least they're not bleeding.

The store is pissed off that Magorium is going to leave, so it sulks and stops doing magic.

Mahoney has to figure out (I'm guessing here) that she is magic, and can command the store to do its wondrous stuff (making stuffed animals come alive, paper airplanes fly around forever, etc.).

There's Eric the kid, and Henry the accountant. And a mysterious character in the basement who creates books. We're not really sure what else he does. And there's a whole army of children who frequent the store (both with and without parents), and it made me wonder why they're there, day after day, and they're not in school.

The whole story is loud, frenetic, and full of flat, two-dimensional computer-generated "wonder" that isn't actually wonderful so much as noisy.

I like the use of "chapters," with Eric the child narrating the story, turning the pages of a book which become the next scene in the movie... but it falls flat when the movie ends abruptly on the last chapter, almost as if they ran out of money and had to wrap it up quickly.

The most interesting part is where Magorium quotes Shakespeare's "King Lear," analyzing what Shakespeare says to describe the death of the king. "He dies." That sums it up, says Magorium, without drama or melancholy, just a fact. It's a five-minute scene, and it's the best in the movie. It's too bad it's buried in almost two hours of dreck.

I love Dustin Hoffman, even though he's just channeling his "Rain Man" character in this film, plus a goofy smile and crazy hair. Natalie Portman is luminous, but wasted in this role I think. As much as I hated "Star Wars: Episodes 1 through 3", I liked her as Queen Amidala much better than as Mahoney. Or even as the little girl in "The Professional." Here, she just spends way too much time reacting to computer-generated things that aren't really there. Just like "Star Wars."
Argh.

Bjork

Likewise, most of Bjork's stuff is not really listenable...the aural equivalent of her swan dress that she wore at the 2001 Oscars (which was the last time I watched the Oscars, oddly enough). But once in awhile she hits close to the mark.

Bjork, "Heirloom"

William Orbit

Most of William Orbit's stuff is a little too strange for me. So is Beth Orton. But on this one song, their two bizarrenesses commingled to form something truly cool.

William Orbit, "Water From a Vine Leaf"

Why is our water yellow?

So we had this big expensive water system put in last week. And now our water is a peculiar shade of yellowy-brown. Or so I'm told. I notice it's darker, instead of relatively clear.

What the f*ck is that about? Isn't our water supposed to be cleaner and clearer?

At least it doesn't smell like sulfur anymore, that much is true. But shouldn't it be clear?

The water guy says, put Iron-Out in the water softener.

Why? Isn't the resin tank supposed to be pulling the iron out? Apparently not. I'm not sure what it really does, then.

This is very irritating. I will have to call the water guy again on Monday.

Death on the roadway

As I was running errands last night, I came upon an opossum on a little two-lane bridge over a creek, between two mall parking lots.

He just stood there, looking at me. I thought I might get out of the car, and herd him back into the underbrush by the side of the road. But then he tried to walk, and he couldn't. His body seemed okay, but he was unable to move his rear legs very well. In the glare of headlights coming from the other direction, I could see a little pool of blood next to him. He had been hit, I think.

He stood there, trying to move a little bit in one direction, then another. He turned around and faced the other direction. He turned back to me, and his eyes were blank. I knew he couldn't see very well with the headlights anyway, and I had a feeling that he was not seeing me at all.

He turned and opened his mouth and cried, and more blood dripped out. He was dying.

There was nothing I could do. If I had had a garbage can, or a big box with me, I could have perhaps scooped him up and carried him into the field next to the road, where he would be safe from being hit again. But I didn't have anything like that, and I dared not approach him because he could bite me with his mouthful of razor teeth. I couldn't call Animal Control, because they don't care about wildlife generally, unless it's a protected species like an alligator or a sea turtle.

I had to turn around and leave. I couldn't watch. I wanted to help him, and I felt so helpless for not being able to. All I could do was pray that he would die quickly and as painlessly as possible.

It made me so sad to see a wild animal suffer like that. And all because these stupid blind old people, who shouldn't be driving at all, just blithely run over anything in their path without regard for the pain and suffering that they cause.

It's so unfair.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I heard through the grapevine that a father and two sons, friends of my extended family, were walking home from a party last weekend, because there was not enough room in the car to take them all to their home a few blocks away. They were walking along the side of the road after midnight, and four Mexicans in a pickup truck with a snowplow blade hit them from behind. The father and one son were killed, and the other son was injured.

The Mexicans were all drunk. Two of them were illegal aliens.

I am so tired of illegal aliens breaking laws and killing people. It's one thing when it's abstract, happening far away to strangers. It's another thing when it happens to people you know. When will our fat-cat Congress act to solve the problem of illegal aliens? They won't. Not until we vote them all out, and put in people who WILL do something about it. Or until enough of the fat cats are affected by the crimes that illegal aliens commit.

Sigh.

Educational songs from childhood

Before children's television became the insanely efficient brain-numbing (or worse, politically-correct brainwashing) tool that it is today, ABC had a series called "Schoolhouse Rock." These were three-minute cartoons that aired in place of commercials on Saturday mornings, during traditional children's cartoon programming.

These were a wonnnnderful series. They had math, language, history, science, and civics lessons.

Math - this one was my favorite tune.
Figure 8

Language - all of these are awesome.
Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here
Conjunction Junction
A Noun Is a Person Place or Thing
Interjections!

Civics:
I'm Just a Bill

History:
No More Kings
Elbow Room
The Shot Heard Round the World

There's a bunch more, but these are my favorites. Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here! I sing these still, to this day.

The annual Christmas boat parade

We went to the annual boat parade down the Intracoastal Waterway. They start miles away, and you have to wait for hours for them to putter down the canal to you. Because it's a weekend, and because it's boating, half of them are drunk. At least one of them was singing loudly off-key on a PA horn. He was quickly drowned out by the boat that I call "Mr. Cannon." Mr. Cannon is a big 40-foot yacht with a large carbide cannon on the swim platform. He fires it off every minute or two as he cruises by. I like it.

Thankfully, police-boat presence was heavy. ;-) Last year a group of teenagers swept past in a powerboat and mooned a crowd of their peers on the other side of the canal. They were swiftly pulled over by the water police. No such fun this year, though.

Please pardon the blurriness of some of these pictures. The light-gathering power of this Kodak V570's lens is fairly poor compared to my lost Nikon Coolpix S4, mainly because it's about one-fifth the diameter. It makes up for it in greater sensitivity (up to ASA 3200) but still, lens diameter makes the biggest difference in night-shooting.

Check out the two videos at the end.








The supporters of fringe Presidential candidate Ron Paul are few, but very loud. They were riding up and down the bike path behind us, with big placards tied to the backs of their bikes, and flashing lights and stuff. Mmmhmmm. Right, then.




I'm fairly certain that this guy owns a bar.










There were a couple of Santas on jet skis zipping around. And one boat here had hula dancers on it, plus the obligatory pink flamingo.


Sometimes they go all out, with computer-controlled lights and music. More than one boat had its light show fail (burn out) before they got to us. It's not easy to rig all that electrical stuff on a boat. Many boats have to bring along a generator just to power the lights.

Christmas decorations!

It's that time of year again! My darling wife has been working hard for two weeks, pulling decorations out of storage, weeding out the ones she no longer needs, and then putting up the rest.

That's what this nook near the ceiling is good for!


This is about one-fiftieth of all the kitchen magnets we have.


I like the way the snowman lights up the water jug beneath him.


We have somewhere between one flamingo and 3500 flamingos. We counted them all, once. It took most of a day.


Here's two more flamingos. They're animatronic...they sing and dance. Am I the only person who is creeped out by the increasing number of animatronic decorations on the market? EVERYTHING moves and sings and dances now. Everything that is lifeless is imitating life. It's like that awful Steven Spielberg movie, "A.I.", only not as good. Why must things imitate life? How about being static and pretty, instead of moving around and weirding me out!


Some pretty, static decorations.


I forget what the thing in the middle is called. You hang a decoration on it for every day of the 25 days counting down to Christmas.








One of our two vintage aluminum trees from the 1950s. We even have a color wheel to shine on it, and make it all sparkly. Have you looked for a color wheel lately? I dare you to find one. They are rarer than the dodo bird.

The joy of blogging

Here's a screen I haven't seen on Blogger before.

I can only imagine the collective gasps of all the bloggers who tried to post their thoughts today... and couldn't. Sort of like wanting to sneeze and not...quite...being...able...to.

I know some bloggers who live and die on the keyboard. Their lives are bound up in the ego of creativity, and in having other people read it.

Me, I just like to write. It's the only time of the day that I get to write something creative. Yeah, that's what it is. ;-)

And then there are those f*cking spambots, which post ads to a blog's Comments section! Those things are the WORST. That's why Blogger has a selectable feature that requires that the commenter type a series of letters shown on the screen. This confirms that the commenter is actually a human and not a spambot. Sigh. I hate having to use such things. Wouldn't it be simpler to take up a collection and hire a hit squad to go out and kill the dozen people in the world who are responsible for 98 percent of all spam? How hard could that be? I mean, these are 40-year-old nerds working out of their mom's basements, for goodness' sake. I would think the 400 kilovolt power line running directly into the fusebox on the back porch would be the first clue on where to look for a spammer. Kick in the door, say hi to Mom, go find the nerd in the basement, and put a bullet through his head. Quite Easily Done. Money well spent, in my opinion.

Ah, the joy of blogging, and all the follies and flubs and foibles that go with it.

Is it so hard to make something pretty?

We got about 20 minutes into the pilot episode of "Tin Man" on the SciFi channel the other night, and had to turn it off. Dark, dreary, depressing. I like Zooey Deschanel (from the movie "Elf") and I want her to succeed, but I can't watch this twisted version of "The Wizard of Oz." It's so far removed from the childlike wonder of the L. Frank Baum books, it's unrecognizable really.

Why do people always have to take something pretty, and "deconstruct" it to make it ugly? Why not take something ugly, and "construct" it to make it pretty?

I think it's just the principle of entropy, applied to art. It's sad.

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I tried again tonight to watch "Tin Man," part 2 of the miniseries. Nope. Just can't like it. Even though it has Neal McDonough from "Band Of Brothers" in it, as the Tin Man (a policeman who's had his heart broken by the death of his family).



Nope. Just not likin' it. Think I'll have to ignore this one, along with the new "Battlestar Galactica." Never could see Starbuck as a woman, even if she does smoke cigars. Not happenin'.

PVC

PVC doesn't just stand for polyvinyl chloride, that white plastic that they make pipes and things from. It also stands for premature ventricular contraction, which is where the heart feels like it skips a beat. In reality, it's a slightly-delayed beat, followed by a stronger-than-normal beat. To the patient, it feels like your heart stops. It's an eternity before it begins beating again.

Apparently half of all men over 40 have PVCs. Most men don't even know it. It's usually a benign symptom, and nothing is actually wrong. It can be triggered by stimulants such as caffeine. If you don't like PVCs, don't drink coffee, tea, or caffeinated soft drinks, say the doctors.

Venus Hum

Venus Hum is a techno band out of Nashville. They are kind of cool. Annette, the singer, grew up in Montana, singing big band songs from the 1940s. She makes her own clothes. Probably cuts her own hair, too, I would bet.

I don't know too much what the point of the video is, but I like being able to see the lyrics of the song, being spoken and flying through the air. Pretty neat.

Venus Hum, "Soul Sloshing"

Finally, decent water

Hooray, we finally have a good water purification system! We already had the three things on the right (a bladder tank with a pump to pull the well water out of the ground, a tall resin canister to pull the iron out of the water (it didn't work well because the resin was almost completely depleted) and a shorter salt tank to soften the water).

We just added another bladder tank and a pump to fill the new aerator, which is the big tank on the left. The aerator sprays the water into a fine mist, which lets the sulfur in the water vaporize and escape as gas. It also takes out some of the iron. And we got a refill of resin so that the rest of the iron is gone too.

Now the right-hand pump fills the aerator, and the left-hand pump supplies the water to the house. And they're both much louder to us now, because they're right under the windowsill, as opposed to being on the ground like the original pump was. Oh well.

It's wonderful to have good clean water.

An interesting lesson

A new person moved into our neighborhood last year. He parked his Land Rover SUV carelessly; he cut down a lot of vegetation on his lot and then threw all the yard waste into the yard of his next-door neighbor, who is an old lady and cannot clean it up herself, so it just laid there and rotted; he put up a huge ugly white plastic fence all the way around his corner property, which looked unfriendly. My wife and I thought and said unkind things about him, though we had never met him and didn't even know what he looked like. Just his actions with his property annoyed us.

Today at the garage sale (I will put up pix later), a youngish man (30s) and his wife and his little 2-year-old girl came to shop. They were very polite, spoke with an accent, and bought a brandy snifter and some glasses from us. They said they were from the Czech Republic, and were relatively new here. They said they'd bought the house around the corner - the one with the big white plastic fence.

Oops.

We had a nice chat with them. After they left, my wife and I looked sheepishly at each other. We both felt badly that we had thought and said unkind things about them without ever having met them, and then after meeting them, discovered they were very nice people.

It was an interesting and useful lesson.