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.