I'm taking a break from blogging

I'm stating the obvious, I guess. But I really havn't had much to talk about lately. Jen does a much better job of keeping things current than I do, so for now, you can follow our story at Jen's Blog. See ya later - j

4-Day Work Week

I am really pushing hard for this at work. I could deal with four ten-hour days or just working from home one day a week. Trouble is, I work at a place where they seem to value face time. Not so bad if you live close, but it sucks when you have damn-near a 60-mile round trip every day.

I am loving the fact that the American automotive industry is going down the tank. They've been stubbornly producing these gas-guzzling behemoths for years, and it's finally caught up with them.

Put a few less stupid commercials on TV and give us something that gets decent mileage for God's sake!

Inflation Shock

What is happening around here?? I feel like we're stuck in a downward spiral these days. Everyone at work is nervous - business has began to slow down, and there's a general feeling of unease in the air. Many of our competitors and even some of our clients have began laying people off. Some days I feel as if the axe could fall on me too!

I guess the one good thing is that we don't have much to lose. We are not too heavily invested in the stock market, and our fortunes aren't directly tied to the financial industry - like much of Charlotte is. But indirectly, we certainly are. Anyway, you know what they say about one door closing and another one opening?

SONGCATCHER: A VISUAL INTERPRETATION OF SOUND

At Lark and Key

Weezer

Thanks Matt for reminding me how cool this band was (especially the Hash Pipe song from a while back). I haven't really heard too much from them prior to this latest record. I have been cranking up their first album a lot this week around the house - much to Jennifer's chagrin. Quaid digs them though.

Kung Fu Panda

This movie was great. I'm not usually into these assembly-line animated flicks that Hollywood figured out were cash cows a while back, and now churns out with increasing regularity. This was an awesome one, though. Go see it.

Larkspur

Here is where Jen will be this weekend. Obviously, this should be on her blog, but I haven't posted anything in a while, so here it is. She's taking McKenna - I'll be home with Quaid and Aydan - going to see Kung Fu Panda.

My New Favorite Song

Verona

At Starbucks, I always get a large iced coffee with an espresso shot. I love to make them at home on the weekends, too. I am usually the first one up around here on the weekends. Well, let me take that back. Maybe the kids are up first - but they're generally sequestered in front of cartoons, which gives me an opportunity to make very strong iced coffee with splenda and half-and-half, and read the paper in the kitchen. It's just great.

9-11 Conspiracy Theorists

I saw a short film the other day about how 9-11 was really perpetrated by the government.

I must say, I am amazed, I mean really AMAZED at the shear stupidity of a good deal of the American population. I know we all want to believe in shadowy conspiracy theories and things like that, but when 30 percent of the country thinks the trade center buildings were brought down by controlled explosions, it makes me think we have no business being a world super-power. The events that unfolded on 9-11 have been among the most-extensively studied in history. So apparently, this conspiracy involves thousands of people, including just about everyone in the media, and apparently Al Qaeda as well, who claimed credit for the attacks. This is a government that can't manage to get its approval ratings out of the toilet, and yet is able to pull off a conspiracy on a scale never before witnessed in the course of human history??

Don't tell me our government is capable of pulling something like this off. No they're not. I think I'll have finally found one argument I can win.

Kheper aegyptiorum

The whole tone of this post sounds more like something Jen would write on her blog (because it's about the kids, and speaks in that matter-of-fact-aren't-they-so-cute tone I usually abhor) but I must say that Quaid is a chip off the old block.

At dinner the other day, Jen was asking all of us to make some resolutions or state things about ourselves that we were going to try and work on. Completely missing the point (or making a mockery of the whole affair, I prefer to think) Quaid announced that he was resolved to doing research on dung beetles. Now clearly this is something straight out of my own playbook. Actually, the dung beetle is quite fascinating (and cute). I helped him research them on the Internet, and he's giving a show-and-tell talk about them tomorrow.

Hail to the dung beatle!

Summer Time Movies

There are some movies coming out this summer that I really want to see. The first is Iron Man, and also Hellboy II. I am a fan of most Guillermo del Toro movies. I'm sure there are some others but I can't remember what they are right now. Speaking of movies, I watched Alien vs. Predator II, which sucked, this weekend. I mean really, why would anyone expect this movie to be any good anyway? The weekend before, I saw There Will Be Blood, and I must say I was kind of disappointed by that as well. I did see a good zombie movie from 1974 called Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. It is a unheralded yet critically-acclaimed (at least as far as the genre goes) Spanish film, shot in England, that sort of marked the transition from the classics (in b/w) Night of the Living Dead to (in color) Dawn of the Dead. I know this only because I have a cool book all about zombie movies.

Here is a site run by some friends of ours where you can buy homemade soap and junk like that. Jennifer traded for some a while back, and it's really good.

Polygamists Make Their Own Fashion Statement

I thought this article featuring the weird polygamist women was kind of interesting. I thought the part about how the clothing is "stitched with special markings to protect the body and to remind you of your commitment" was pretty good. That got me thinking about some exhibit or something I saw once that featured medieval chastity belts, which featured all assortments of spikes, teeth and other bizarre implements of deterrence. I did a brief search for a site that might contain a photo gallery of such devices, but didn't really have any luck. In doing so, however, I did learn that apparently there is still a large contemporary market for such devices.

And I also came across this headline: "Woman's Chastity Belt sets off Airport Security Alarm"

Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers

I had a meeting the other day at work with a guy who looked a lot like Kenny Rogers and it reminded me again of this site. Actually, I think an old boss of mine would qualify for this as well.

No More Artie??

I havn't been listening lately, so I was very saddened to learn that Artie may have left the Howard Stern show for good. I can't imagine it was a bit or something - the show won't be the same without him.

The Hold Steady

I am becoming more and more convinced this is one of the best bands around now-a-days.

Bush's War

I was excited tonight to watch part 1 of the PBS Frontline special entitled Bush's War at 8 o'clock. Instead, there was some show on about alligators or something. Fortunately, I discovered you can watch the whole thing online here. I just finished part 1 - it's very good so far.

70's Cereal and Stuff Like That

This guy has a site with some pretty good stuff from back in the day..I love things like this.

Happy Easter

Hello - we had a great Easter weekend. My mother and my sister Cindy came down to visit. We had an Easter egg hunt after church, and then Jen's parents came over and joined us for brunch. I made most of the stuff from a recent brunch menu in Gourmet magazine. Check this spread - we had a small honey-glazed baked ham, low country breakfast shrimp with creamy stone-ground grits, slow-roasted tomatoes, ambrosia, baked pimento-cheese toasts, a salad of winter lettuce with warm sweet and sharp dressing, eggs with cream and spinach, buttermilk biscuits and sugared blackberries. For desert there was bourbon pecan tart with homemade whipped cream. Cindy brought a Rodney Strong chardonnay, that was also good.

With respect to last week's political events..I, like most Americans, was disturbed to hear the paranoid ravings of Obama's lunatic former pastor. As far as I'm concerned, that dude might as well be wearing a Klan outfit. I realize that those words didn't come from Obama's mouth, and nothing in his personality indicates that he holds those same hateful views - but it does speak to the man's judgment. Good God, I wouldn't let my daughters sit through that kind of garbage every Sunday.

Like I said earlier, I had already sort of switched back to Hillary's side before this pastor stuff came out. It looking more and more likely, however, that the die has already been cast in favor of Obama. Talk about a worst case scenario - he may well enter the convention on a downward trajectory, while Hillary is on the way up, but can't secure the nomination. So he enters the general election broken and bloody. All the while, McCain is out there looking presidential. If the Democrats manage to screw this one up, they might as well dissolve the party - it's over.

Circle of Eight Spring Show

Creepy Gnome

I have become fascinated with the story of this creepy gnome that is terrorizing this town. You can go here and read the story and watch the video. Most of it sucks but the end is kind of creepy. I would like to meet a creepy gnome.

Religiosity

I started reading Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower last week. It's really good so far. I had forgotten how puritanical that group was. Then the religious theme continued over the weekend with two disturbing documentaries I watched. The first was Jesus Camp - "a feverish spectacle of a summer camp for evangelical Christian kids is the focus...a fascinating if sometimes alarming documentary." As harsh and wrong-headed as the ramblings of the camp's pastor (Becky Fisher) are - including a disturbing rant about the evils of Harry Potter (a warlock!) - they pale in comparison to the subjects of the movie I watched the next day - Fall From Grace. This movie was about the Westboro Baptist Church (the God Hates Fags people) and followed them around from protest to protest. It's basically one really large family that functions as a cult more or less. The weird thing is, most of the members seem bright and intelligent. And then to hear this garbage coming from their mouths is almost surreal. The over-riding theme in both of these groups (although to a much greater degree with the Westboro people) are notions of hell, and pain and the devil. There's hardly a mention of loving each other.

Religion can really inspire, but it's also no wonder that it's been used as a mechanism of control throughout the ages - playing on people's worst fears.

When Candidates Attack

I just got through watching an interview with John McCain on 60 Minutes. I guess he's the lesser of all evils on the REpublican side - but I don't plan on switching my vote for whoever wins on the Democratic side. And I am still really enjoying the Hillary-Obama slugfest. I think most people are lying when they say the want a clean campaign. I just want entertainment - and the more they fight, the more I'm entertained.

Frozen Time Square

This was so cool and the kids loved it so much I had to post it.

Bob Mould

Glad Matt turned me on to the Bob Mould show March 17 in Charlotte - why does everything I ever want to see around here always have to be on a Monday or something?? Anyway, I'm hoping to hear something from my one of my all-time favorite albums. I'll probably be flying solo for this one beacuse I know I'm not dragging Jen out on a Monday night and she could care a less about the guy anyway.

The Anderson Council

I heard this band on the Sirius Underground Garage channel the other day (specifically, the song Never Stop Being '67) and thought it was pretty cool. The inlfunence is obvious, but they're still pretty good, I thought. You can go to their site and listen.

Improve Everywhere

I had heard of this but had no idea how cool some of these pranks were until I got to watch an episode of the Showtime version of this American Life the other night on my computer. They gave this band the "best gig of their life," and of course the dudes in the band had no idea what was going on. Check out the Mission Highlights on their website. The Frozen Grand Central is hilarious.

Huh?

You know, this woman just cannot catch a break.

Roller Boogie

Sometimes I still can't beleive they made movies like this..

Lark and Key

I guess the upside of having inadvertently deleted my blog is that, since I've principally run out of things to say, I can re-post things I did before and no one will ever know.

By the way, check dude's paintings here. I'd love to have any of these, but they're way out of our range.

I DELETED MY BLOG!

By accident, of course. I was trying to delete my Rosgen Blog and, oh well..Anyway, you get the picture. Two years of stuff down the drain.

It's going to take me a while to get it back like it was.