I love the band switchfoot. The lyrics are pensive, and often thoughtful. The rock is amazingly good, and the compositions are always impressive to me. Attention to detail definitely is definitely a fitting description for their whole sound. They’ve created a new music video that references video games, pop-culture and paper-mation. Right on guys! See it on YouTube!
Category Archives: Opinion
Swimming Lessons in a Pool Full of Tears
Tonight Abby had swimming lessons, but as we left Evelyn just lost it. She cried and cried and cried. Tears streamed down her face that we would leave without her. We could have been going to Hell [Michigan] and she’d have wanted to come with us. Of course somewhere in Nebraska she’d throw an equally intense fit because she was still in the car. She’s become quite the drama queen. I’m praying the God sends a miracle our direction to cause her quaint little happy-all-of-the-time attitude to come back.
Pulling into the parking lot at the recreation center I realized that about 25% more people wanted to recreate than could park in the parking lot. No amount of patience that I could have or have supernaturally given to me was going to free up enough parking spots for me to fit in and get Abby to her lesson in time. So I parked around the side of the park on a side street and we walked to the pool. I think we cleared the quarter mile in about 6 minutes which was good given that Abby is so short and I’m so slow for being in the near prone coding position I sit in all day. [my legal team would like me to state that I don’t actually sit in the prone positionwhile coding lest I be released from contracts for being lazy]
Abby’s swimming lesson went well. She didn’t panic when the teacher instructed her to rest on her back (while being supported by the instructor’s arms). She didn’t panic when the teacher tied a lead weight to her middle and dropped her into the deep end. Abby was well behaved. [My legal department wants me to tell you that no weights were tied to Abby and the deep end of the kiddy pool is only 4 feet deep at most]
Of course the teenaged girl who was doing the group lessons appeared to be maybe fifteen or sixteen years in age if I’m generous. Its hard for me in my nearly-thirty state to just look at a teenaged person and say, “That person is [some number] years old.” My ability to judge ages for people on the whole is weaker now, but the teenagers throw me for a huge loop. I’m even finding some early 20 year olds hard to distinguish from teenagers. It is as if there’s some conspiracy to make me feel very old now. It won’t work, I’ll get plastic surgery and face lifts until I’m 45 and then I’ll just let it all go.
I’m hoping to bring the camera to Wednesday’s lesson. That way you can see pictures of this instructor with Abby and tell me that she isn’t barely older than Abby 😉
Worst Horror Movie Concept Ever
I think this beats out any other prior bad movie concept. Biting Sheep and humanimals [not safe for children and probably work]. I don’t care if this is brought to us by the people who made Gollum, or the people who helped make Gumby, this is dumb. But the upside of bad movies like this is that you know that Hollywood is making a killing on movies to dump money into projects like this. MPAA: when money is being bled like this, please don’t come knocking on private citizen’s doors about losing money because of file sharing 🙂
Getting Up Early Helped A LOT!
By reading this article (link) you will get the impression that the switch to daylight savings netted almost no gain in power efficiency in the United States. I want to posit that the scramble that went into checking software out to make sure that it was ready for the change cost the U.S. more money in computer power and man hours than it will save for decades.
Sad.
American Idol’s Star of the Night?
Tonight’s super-star was a girl who couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old. She cried during several of the performances. How do I know? Because when she was crying the camera crew was on her. She got more attention than the artists when she turned on the water works.
Congratulations Ashley (Ryan Seacrest asked her name) for rocking America with your tears of joy. It was truly like the British invasion video footage I have seen of teen girls crying over the Beatles.
Oh, Sweet, Sweet Justice
Many, many moons ago I reviewed a movie. I hated the movie and was sad I’d watched it. It is officially (at present), the worst reviewed movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes. I reviewed Eks Verses Sever here.
I’m Not Cleaning That Shelf
Today at the deli, where I almost didn’t buy my deli meat I overheard an employee going over a health inspection sheet that apparently stated that some areas of the deli be cleaned by next inspection. This is good, I’m not concerned that they needed to work on some areas because that is just normal for businesses. I was, however, concerned that the lady was then broadcasting that she was not going to be cleaning that shelf! “You have to actually move stuff on that shelf, you can’t just wipe around things,” she said.
I think I’ll be shopping at another ‘super’ market. That’s just not super, and its not marketable. [lies start here] I can get away with not washing my feet because I’d have to actually bend down to wash them, but I don’t believe any health inspectors will be evaluating how clean they are for preparing food on [lies end hear].
My Clever Wife
Jessica is clever. She’s got it in for a contestant on American Idol. She can’t stand the Sanjaya fellow. He’s Hawaiian, which would normally be a plus, but he’s like the Hawaiian version of Michael Jackson, which is a major minus. Wait, he’s not like Michael Jackson in the dancing department, he’s like Michael Jackson in the weirdness department. He doesn’t even sing as well as Micheal Jackson (the 12 year old Michael Jackson, not the one who is in the media now periodically for doing strange things like converting to Islam, touching little boys in naughty ways, and of course having almost as much plastic surgery as the now gone Anna Nicole Smith [whose body was probably no where near deteriorating at the time of her burial]). Sanjaya just gets Jessica’s dander up, and she’s allergic to dander.
So Jessica’s scheme is to call in next week from our phones and vote for the second stinkiest performer (probably that Phil guy) who is male. 15 votes for Phil is 15 votes that can’t go to Sanjaya. Of course once Jessica votes Sanjaya off of the island, she’ll be after Phil. And Phil – you don’t want her after you like that, I’ve seen her game face and she’ll take you out.
Oh, and I predict here and now that Melinda will take the American Idol competition no matter how good Chris Sligh is.
Gilmore Girls
Jessica told me this evening that Gilmore Girls is being cancelled. If you don’t know who or what Gilmore Girls is… you’re lucky. Its one of the weirdest television shows since the X-Files. But instead of being freaky they go for quirky comedy but end up coming across as a combination of having the flu and Groundhog’s Day (the movie) combined. Each episode is exactly the same. Sure, the ‘plot’ changes, or at least re-orders the events a little, but each episode is about a mom and a daughter who are both ADD/ADHD and who have the emotional stability of a woman in labor. I take that back. Women in labor are more stable than these two gals. To top it of there are men [MEN!] on the show who are also emotionally unstable. The upshot is that the humor on the show (I’m not making this up, they actually consider it humor) is entirely non-sequiturs. Entirely. Completely. Fully. Monotonously. Here I will attempt to give you a script (pulled out of my scary imagination) that represents this show:
Scene: Inside of the house the mother is on the phone with the daughter.
Mom: “Rory, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a kabillion times I’m fine.”
Daughter: “Mom, I’ve lived with you since I was in your womb, I know when you’re not fine.” [to be said with a straight face because its not a non-sequitur]
Mom: “Rory, it was my womb, and you still owe me rent.”
Daughter: “I didn’t have any money at the time, but I think I can sell pictures of myself like that Barba gal from American Idol…”
[End Scene before I throw up in my mouth]
Its not good writing, and the acting is dry, but not funny dry like the Brit-coms.
Good-bye Gilmore Girls. I hope all of the ‘actors’ find other ‘roles’ that ‘suit’ them but are not type-cast as mannequins.
All-in-One
I got a new printer last night. The reason that I might need a printer is that data trapped inside of a computer is often useless unless you can gather a large amount of people around your computer, get them their own computers with the same data, or transfer it to them over the Matrix. Since I can’t afford a connection to the Matrix I took the cheap way out.
My old printer wasn’t old, it was barely over one year old when it stopped working. I don’t believe it was an equal rights thing, it just quit working because the fine employees at HP computers worked their backsides off and still didn’t produce the printer that would have worked its backside off. I have to now find a place that will allow me to recycle the printer so that folks can disassemble it and turn it into lawn clippings or some such nonsense.
The new printer has fax capabilities built in. I feel so 1988.