We actually watched most of the super bowl last night. The game was pretty boring, but there were one or two decent commercials. I dug the baboons Sierra Mist commercial and the Terry Tate Reebok commerical was priceless. Go here for an extended version of the commercial. You have to register an email address, but it’s a small price to pay. I should have some new pictures of the week up tonight.
I’ve definitely railed on this topic in the past and may have even posted about it. Here’s yet another incident, this one local, of an oldster hitting the wrong pedal and plowing into a structure and/or some people. There should be a mandatory driving exam every year for anyone over the age of 65 who still wants to drive a car. Period. Yes, I’m willing to submit to it when I get that old.
I finally updated the picture of the week for The La. We haven’t taken any new ones of The Boy since Xmas, so I dug up one of him playing ping pong and Pascal and Sybil’s annual party this past December.
I went to see Narc on Saturday night with R., hAndy, Casey and Butter. It was pretty good. I give it a B/B+. I also watched Training Day, Beautiful Mind, Startup.com, and Dial M for Murder over the last few days on either cable or video rental. I have to say that Training Day and Beautiful Mind were both overrated. Startup.com underscored the absurdity of the dot-com frenzy. I just kept laughing through the whole thing. Seeing Dial M for Murder again reminded me of the genius of Hitchcock. If you’ve never seen any of his stuff other than Psycho, you need to get to the nearest video store. I suggest Saboteur, Notorious, North By Northwest, Dial M for Murder, Rope, The Trouble with Harry, Rear Window, and Vertigo.
I’m not usually one to talk politics. It usually degenerates into a debate that goes nowhere as most people are set in their views and unwilling to concede to any other opinion. Current events, however, are moving me to be a little more vocal. I realize that actions speak louder than words, but it’s a little harder to act with a 4-year-old and a three-month-old in the house. Since a web site is potentially the most public place to voice an opinion, assuming, of course, that “public” is defined as people who have Internet access and are motivated to actually find and read your site (which amounts to about 10 people in my case), I thought I’d do a quick post.
I’m against the apparently inevitable invasion of Iraq. While it’s clear that Saddam deserves to be ousted, it’s not prudent for the US to do it alone and, to my mind, there’s still not enough evidence to justify a forced regime change. I realize that I won’t be getting visit from Condi Rice or Colin Powell to explain to me personally whatever intelligence they mave have, but if no other nation in the world is willing to back us up, we’re just asking for trouble down the road.
I keep coming back to Bush’s speech in 2001 and the “Axis of evil” statement. As of yesterday, indications from North Korea are that part of the reason that they’ve started the nuclear crisis is because of those comments. They’re basically trying to force us into a non-aggression agreement with them because they figure that after we’re done bombing the crap out of Saddam, they’re next. By the way, all this talk about bombing reminds me of George Carlin’s hilarious routine about war. It loses a little without his delivery, but there’s a transcript here.
On the domestic front, the new Bush economic plan is ridiculous. I’ll save myself some time and link to a RealAudio stream (you’ll need to download the free player if you don’t have it already) of Kevin Phillips’ commentary on Morning Edition yesterday morning. Right on.
I’ve been getting hounded recently for not updating the picture of the week for either kid. If you’ve been keeping up, we were all sick just after xmas, so the opportunity didn’t really present itself to take new pictures and we still haven’t taken any. However, I did finally attempt importing video from our camera to the computer so that I could post it here. The quality isn’t all that great as I went for a smaller file size and, at the moment, I’m only able to use the windows media format. I’d prefer Quicktime, but I can’t seem to get that to work right now. Hopefully, I’ll get it figured out soon. I’m also not sure if this will work in all browsers. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it will only work with IE. I know that it doesn’t work with Mozilla. If you have problems, let me know and I’ll try to see if I can fix them. Now, without further ado and excuses, click here.
If anyone needed any proof that we’re all going to hell, this is it. Of course, Fox is leading the way. Jon Stewart had a pretty funny commentary on this on the Daily Show last night. Damn, that show is funny. Anyway, I’m not a big fan of reality TV (except the Osbournes), but I wonder how much lower they’ll sink?
Check out this article about the Kenner Star Wars toys from the 70’s. I’m busy kicking myself for not keeping that “Early Bird ” package intact for all the money it fetches these days. I remember waiting for it and I distinctly remember getting it in the mail. I had totally forgotten about that weird cardboard background for the figures, but I definitely had that too. I also remember the Boba Fett and Bossk mail aways, but didn’t get in on them at the time. Meeemries…
I forgot to mention that the other cool thing about the new photo albums is that you have the opportunity to get a print of any picture you see in the albums via Shutterfly. If you go to any enlarged photo view, there’s a link on the upper right that says “Print on Shutterfly”. It’ll take you to their website and allow you to order a print which will then be sent to you.
Chronology of last night, keeping in mind that The La and I are both sick and The Wife was working. Also, it was an extremely windy night and we’ve had a lot of rain recently.
| 10pm | The La falls asleep and I put her on her stomach in the middle of our bed. |
| 10:30pm | The Wife leaves for work. |
| 11pm | The La wakes up because snot is keeping her from breathing through her nose. |
| 11:30pm | I get The La back to sleep in her swing. I go to bed. |
| 2:30am | The La wakes up hungry, still in the swing. I feed her a bottle. |
| 3am | The La is asleep again, but this time propped up on her back in her bassinet. I, however, can’t sleep due to constant nose blowing and sore throat. I lay awake for almost a half an hour when I hear something walking through the leaves in our front yard (our bedroom window faces the front yard). I look out the window and see Sam sniffing around the front yard. My makeshift repairs to our rickety backyard fence which was damaged by a fallen branch last winter have apparently not held up well in the high winds. I go open the front door an let the dog into the laundry room where I keep him until I get up in the morning and can actually do something about the fence. I finally fall asleep around 4. |
| 5:30am | The La wakes up again and seems to think that it’s time to get up. I feed her again and stick her back in the swing. I finally convince her to sleep around 6:30 at which point I fall back in bed. |
| 7am | My alarm goes off. |
| 7:30am | I actually get up. |
| 8am | The Wife arrives home and is now coming down with the same thing that The La and I have. She’s only had 5 hours sleep since Tuesday morning and will now have to try to sleep and deal with The La for the rest of the day as I have to go to work. BTW, I’m technically supposed to be there at 8. Thankfully, The Boy’s daycare re-opens from the holidays today. |
| 8:15am | I make hurried repairs to the makeshift repairs on the fence and hope they hold until I can get more time to do it properly. I threaten the dog with a live skinning if he gets out again, for all the good that’ll do. |
| 8:30am | The Boy and I leave for work/daycare. |
| 9am | I arrive at work. Only an hour late. |
We survived last night. I’m about to lose my voice and The La’s drooling buckets. The La and I were in bed before The Wife left for work at 10:15 last night. My only indication that the new year had arrived was being woken up by my neighbor’s own private fireworks show. I did manage to post some xmas pictures in the photos section. We’ll see how tonight goes. I’ll be calling my doctor’s office first thing in the morning to try and get an appointment so I can get drugs.