Our Christmas Decorations

Like many people, with Thanksgiving now behind us, we've shifted our attention to Christmas. We decorated our living room tonight. What do you think?

It was back-breaking work, I tell you. I think including the time to dig it out of the box, we spent three whole minutes getting things just right. Phew. Good thing we only have to do this once a year, I tell you!

Quote of the Day

There's nothing really behind this, I saw it on a web toon's blogpost yesterday, and I remembered really, really liking it when John Spencer said it. Figured if I posted it here, I'd remember it a bit more easily.

This guy's walkin' down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you! Can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole; can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can ya help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are ya stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.

- Leo McGarry
from The West Wing

Expecting a Swell Time

Tonight I'm taking my first non-medically related night off in over a year, so I can take TLoML to The Swell Season in concert at the Egyptian Theater. I haven't been to the Egyptian in ages -- it used to be our default movie theater in the dark ages (or slightly more recently). I've never seen a live performance there, so even the venue should prove interesting.

In honor of that, a couple of Swell Season videos to whet my appetite:

(song starts about 3:55 in)

Will Thanksgiving 2010 be in September?

If our president, who was so often and favorably compared to FDR earlier this year, continues to try to tinker with the economy, it wouldn't surprise me (but I'm mostly engaging in hyperbole here).

What got me thinking was this very interesting (and brief) history of the holiday -- both in its inception and eventual federalization -- that The Front Porch Republic recently ran by Bill Kauffman.

George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789, but the early presidents, disproportionately Virginian and of a states' rights disposition, regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist. Even John Quincy Adams...was reluctant to be seen as "introducing New England manners" by a public acknowledgement of Thanksgiving.

...The indefatigable [antebellum New England novelist and editor Sarah Josepha] Hale propagandized ceaselessly for the glory of late November Thursdays, pumpkin pie, roasted turkey, "savory stuffing"—everything but the Detroit Lions. It took 35 years and a civil war, but Mrs. Hale's efforts paid off when President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving and a legal holiday.

Lincoln's successor's fiddled with the date a little, but in the end, for 70 years, the last Thursday of November was the holiday (which many states didn't recognize, or recognized when they wanted to).

It seems that in 1939 Thanksgiving was to fall on November 30th, a matter of consternation to the big merchants of the National Retail Dry Goods Association (NRDGA). The presidents of Gimbel Brothers, Lord & Taylor, and other unsentimental vendors petitioned President Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving to the previous Thursday, November 23, thus creating an additional week of Christmas shopping—and to the astonishment of those Americans without dollar signs in their eyes, the President did so. (Not all merchants favored the shift. One Kokomo shopkeeper hung a sign in his window reading, "Do your shopping now. Who knows, tomorrow may be Christmas.")

Opinion polls revealed that more than 60 percent of Americans opposed the Rooseveltian ukase; dissent was especially vigorous in New England. The selectmen of Plymouth, Massachusetts informed the President, "It is a religious holiday and [you] have no right to change it for commercial reasons." Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks to the Almighty, harrumphed Governor Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, "and not for the inauguration of Christmas shopping."

Although the states customarily followed the federal government’s lead on Thanksgiving, they retained the right to set their own date for the holiday, so 48 battles erupted. As usual, New Deal foes had all the wit, if not the votes. A New Hampshire senator urged the President to abolish winter; the Oregon attorney general versified:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November;

All the rest have thirty-one.

Until we hear from Washington.

Ack, I've quoted, too much, go read the rest of Kauffman's piece, which I'd just reproduce totally here, but I hate when blogs do that...so go, read, and head over the river and through the woods and find yourself some turkey.

The Source of Giving Thanks

THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD’S GOODNESS IN HIS CREATION
WILL LEAD US TO THANKFULNESS AND TRUST

There remains the second part of the rule, more closely related to faith. It is to recognize that God has destined all things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his power and grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon us, and so bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him. Indeed, as I pointed out a little before, God himself has shown by the order of Creation that he created all things for man’s sake. For it is not without significance that he divided the making of the universe into six days, even though it
would have been no more difficult for him to have completed in one moment the whole work together in all its details than to arrive at its completion gradually by a progression of this sort. But he willed to commend his providence and fatherly solicitude toward us in that, before he fashioned man, he prepared everything he foresaw would be useful and salutary for him. How great ingratitude would it be now to doubt whether this most gracious Father has us in his care, who we see was concerned for us even before we were born! How impious would it be to tremble for fear that his kindness might at any time fail us in our need, when we see that it
was shown, with the greatest abundance of every good thing, when we were yet unborn! Besides, from Moses we hear that, through His liberality, all things on earth are subject to us. It is certain that He did not do this to mock us with the empty title to a gift. Therefore nothing that is needful for our welfare will ever be lacking to us.

To conclude once for all, whenever we call God the Creator of heaven and earth, let us at the same time bear in mind that the dispensation of all those things which he has made is in his own hand and power and that we are indeed his children, whom he has received into his faithful protection to nourish and educate. We are therefore to await the fullness of all good things from him alone and to trust completely that he will never leave us destitute of what we need for salvation, and to hang our hopes on none but him! We are therefore, also, to petition him for whatever we desire; and we are to recognize as a blessing from him, and thankfully to acknowledge, every benefit that falls to our share. So, invited by the great sweetness of his beneficence and goodness, let us study to love and serve him with all our heart.

- John Calvin
The Institutes of the Christian Religion
1.14.22

Jagged Little Pill

Was flipping through my radio presets the other day, begging the computers who put Johnny Fever et al. out of work for something I wanted to listen to, when (finally!) The Bob came through for me, playing the original version of Alanis' "You Oughta Know." I was slightly taken aback, to tell you the truth, clearly I've spent far too much time listening to the 1996 Grammy Awards version and 10th Anniversary Acoustic version. I'd forgotten just how, for lack of a better term, raw the song was (even now, really).

Inspired by that, I've listened to the entire Jagged Little Pill album a handful of times in the last few days. It's one of those albums that's very easy to get lost in, my productivity slipped a lot while I sang/hummed along. Yes, there are problems with the album -- her poor understaning of irony, for example -- but it's about as close to perfection as you can get in a pop album. Joy, contentment, amusement with the human condition, anger, disappointment, did I mention anger?, love...she covers all the bases in a way really no one had before -- at least not with the commercial success she found.

I would consider myself an Alanis fan -- TLoML's a bigger one, tho'. We have every album, even the concert VHS from the Jagged days. And while I enjoy her stuff, and the artist she's evolved into, I'd say there's only about 1/3 of her material I like as much as this album. It's probably unfair to compare anything else she does to the magic that was Jagged, much like it's unfair to compare anything Peter Jackson does to his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Seinfeld cast to that show, etc. If someone catches lightning in a bottle once, you should be impressed that they did and enjoy it for what it is, without demanding the impossible again and again.

If you have it on your shelf (or hard drive), do yourself a favor and give it a whirl if you haven't recently. You'll be glad you did.

Mamma .... Mamma ... Mamma ...

a little fun to brighten your day ... this is a real hoot (IMHO). You might want to click through to youtube and watch it full size.



Naturally, in response to this, one has to ask, "Am I really a guy who says 'a real hoot' without irony?" ugh.

A Pre-Thanksgiving Feast

Arnold's Kindergarten class hosted a Thanksgiving feast today, unlike the ones I had in school growing up, there was actual food (prepared by students and staff) not just candy corn and cupcakes. The Pilgrim and Native American costumes were likewise made out of actual cloth, not construction paper and paper bags from the grocery store. They're far more classy than we were :) Parents and grandparents were invited, and encouraged to bring cameras. I, of course, left my camera on my desk and the batteries in the charger. So I got to try out my new phone's camera. With one exception, I seemed to do okay with it (def. the best phone-based camera I've owned).

Do note the male-female ratio in some of these group shots, in future years, this will be a dream of these young men, but now it's something akin to torture.

local readers will want to take note that there is not a single religious text to be found (and no, I didn't crop them out), despite this being on the grounds of a certain notorious school. Ironically enough, the lack of such is one of those things that would've been abhorrent to the people they sought to honor. But at this point, the Idaho National Guard probably would've been called out if these kids had one.

Just Weird to Watch SNL Go Political and Agree with It

it happens occasionally, but still weirds me out each time.

Not Sure Which is Worse...

Trying to imagine what this man went through, or the very real possibility that there are countless like him.

From the Daily Mail:

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound.

'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.

'I dreamed myself away,' he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-Patient-trapped-23-year-coma-conscious-along.html#ixzz0Xh8dZBP1

You've got to read the whole thing.

Thought for the Lord's Day - #50

Those who are strict in restraining their own liberty yet ought not to impose those restraints upon the liberties of others, nor to judge of them accordingly. We must not make ourselves the standard to measure others by. A good man will deny himself that liberty which he will not deny another, contrary to the practice of the Pharisees.

- Matthew Henry

This Post Is Sincere. No, Really.

This is a movement I could totally get behind. If only I had the abilities, I'd be cranking this stuff out.

You know it'd be way more useful than Comic Sans.

Sometimes you Feel Like Father of the Year

...without doing a darn thing.

I've seen repeated references to this over the last week in various corners of the 'Net, but really haven't bothered to read the details 'til now. According to the Minnesota Daily"

With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist d'Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon — the language of the alien race of "Star Trek" fame — for the first three years of his life.

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers said. "He was definitely starting to learn it."

Now I have the first edition of Simon & Schuster's Klingon-English Dictionary (also the book tape recorded by Michael Dorn), I even memorized a phrase or two from it back in high school--as did many of my friends. But that's just geeky fun, as is the Klingon Boggle that the guys on The Big Bang Theory play, it's a bit extreme, but you know there are people out there that do that.

But this guy takes the cake, right? What a nerd! Something about that story didn't work right, I know fanboys tend towards the odd, and frequently pathetic, but...as goofy as we tend to be, we do manage to keep a foot in reality.

But I guess that's why you need to read all the context. The Klingon child-rearing is not the point of the article, it was actually an introduction to talking about this company making nifty language learning software and Speers' consulting for it.

He's actually not a Trekker at all,

As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby "May the Empire Endure" with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn't speak a word of Klingon.

Although some of the things he's done lead people to believe he's a "Star Trek" fanatic, Speers said it's actually a passion for language that attracts him to Klingon.

"I don’t go to 'Star Trek' conventions, I don't wear the fake forehead," he said. "I’m a linguist."

Ahhh, now it makes sense. Nerds, geeks, fanboys and all will ultimately (often times far too late, see these people) show some restraint.

Academics on the other hand...

Miscellaney: Twilight, Cell Phones, Vids, and other stuff

This afternoon, I really wanted to write up something on the new DVD set Monty Python: Almost the Truth, but I just don't have the time/attention span. Hopefully I can crank it out at work tonight. So, we'll just do this list of things that come to mind for no reason.

• Chuck comes back on January 10, Burn Notice on the 28th. January's gonna be a killer month.
  
• Not that anyone really cares about my take on this, but as someone who knows next to nothing about cell phone technology, the Samsung Solstice is really nice, and once I get better at the whole touch screen thing I will probably become enslaved to it.
  
• I'm reading the Twilight Saga this month, I'd read the Twilight before it became a mega-sensation, but hadn't gotten to the rest of the series. I'm halfway through Eclipse, and even tho' I know it's moot (and a lost battle), I have to say I'm a Team Jacob guy. (I can't believe I took a side in this...what's wrong with me? Feel free to fill up the comments section on that one).
  
• Whoever did this has way too much time on their hands, one of the better jobs along these lines I've seen:
  
  
• This ain't too shabby, either
  
  
• When Matt Smith was cast as Doctor Who last year, I could only wonder about the sanity of Steven Moffat (who I trusted almost implicitly before this), and wondered if he could pull it off. After watching The Waters of Mars I could only feel sorry for the poor guy. I imagine him watching that and calling his agent to get him out of it, "I don't want to have to follow this guy!!!"
  
• There's a real downside to school uniforms...particularly if you have grade school boys. 2 of the 4 came home with ruined pants today (I seriously want to send a bill to the parents of the kid that tripped Samwise).
  
• Be careful before you click this link, you'll end up singing a particular song for a day or three, but it would be very cool (for some reason, Facebook wouldn't allow me to post the 4 times I tried) if Nathan Fillion got his dream role.
  
• As I mentioned recently, The Swell Season's new album Strict Joy is just great--I ponied up the extra money and got about 2 hours of concert tracks along with the album. On one of the tracks, Glen Hansard starts talking about recently being introduced to the Freaks and Geeks DVD set (gift idea, btw), which made me like him even more. So when he twittered about this song last night, I had to check youtube just in case. It had already been posted, this internet being the quick thing that it is. This is a hoot and a half (but very "adult" material, consider yourself warned).
  
  
• Semi-serious note, in what will be sure to be controversial, Roger Ebert un-anonymizes himself. Very inspirational.
  
• If anyone with a flair for graphic arts or whatever wants 3-4 very small jobs (with smaller budgets), lemme know.
  
• Lastly, I finally topped the 50% mark today in NaNoWriMo!! Yeah, I'm 4 days late on that, but as TLomL noted (and I doubted until I later verified) I was even more behind last year. The amount of research I'm going to have to do on top of the editing on this thing is going to be daunting, but at least it'll keep me busy.

What Messages are We Watching?

Hate to simply point you to another person's blogging today, particularly a blog I pointed to last week, but in my defense: A. It's been one of those days; and 2. This is a great post worthy of my pointing, your clicking.

From Geek Dad (my favorite corner of Wired.com, so glad ThinkGeek promoted them recently in a newsletter): Top 10 Bad Messages From Good Movies (somewhat tongue in cheek, but decent point)

Sometimes it can be hard to see the messages a movie teaches, especially if they’re unintentional. The best way to see a movie’s messages, the bad ones in particular, is to be a parent watching the movie with your kids. Suddenly you find yourself talking to your kids after you leave the theater or after the video finishes playing at home, just to see if they picked up on the bad messages. Then, if they did, you can try to do some damage control.

Quality doesn’t generally come into play when it comes to messages: There are plenty of bad movies whose messages are perfectly benign, and plenty of good movies that have messages you definitely wouldn’t want your kids to take to heart. It is this latter category with which this list is concerned. Here then is a countdown of the top 10 bad messages in good (and at least somewhat geeky) movies:

I'd picked up some of these on my own, and wish I'd thought of the rest. Like many parents, I really do care about the messages sent/received through the movies my kids watch.

Pixar's Up

We finally caught Up this weekend. Personally, I had high hopes for this movie, but have to admit to a good deal of trepidation as I hit the "play" button. While Ratatouille was cute enough, and was well done, it was at the the bottom of my Pixar list (near the bottom of animated family flicks, honestly), until WALL•E came out anyway--what a snooze-fest! So I was a little worried that Pixar might have run out of magic.

I didn't even get through the title sequence before I knew that wasn't true. How could your heart not melt (or at least get a bit squishy) watching Carl and Ellie's life together. And Up just got better from there.

The voice talents rocked--particularly Bob Peterson pulling double duty as Dug and Alpha (Dug's my second favorite dog character of the year, I'd gladly watch his further adventures even if Russel and Carl weren't anywhere around). It took Frodo a syllable to recognize ol' John Ratzenberger, just wish his part had been bigger. Of course, Ed Asner carried the film, and did so easily--Carl practically lived and breathed, the combination of that animation and Asner's voice was a match made in heaven.

This, incidentally, is one of those movies that makes our upgrade to BluRay last year absolutely worth it...gorgeous movie.

The plot may not have been Pixar's strongest (wasn't the weakest, I'll add quickly), but whatever small problems it had, they vanished in the overall brilliance of this film.

Funny, heartfelt, exciting, and touching--everything you expect from Pixar.

Grade: A+

NaNoWriMo Update

Those of you keeping score at home^* have noticed those progress bars to the right haven't moved much in the last week--and actually not at all for a few days. Yup. Whoops.

I hit a pothole, and while NaNoWriMo is all about pushing yourself, to keep on writing and not bother with things like fact checking or editing, etc. until you have a first draft, I'd reached a point that without some research, I couldn't progress at all. So I took the time to do the research, which was helpful, but destroyed the 3 or 4 ideas to keep the plot moving forward. I came up with 2 real solid plans from the research though, but couldn't figure out how to incorporate them into my story without rewriting at least half of it (and aging my 10 year old protagonist by 3-5 years, which would make a fairly significant change in how he acts, thinks, and talks--and I really wasn't in the mood for that).

So I spent another day and a half just stuck there. Which was so, so, not fun at all. Not even thinking about my word count, just that I'd lost momentum--and was having a pretty fun time writing daily.

Thankfully, a tangential point of my research, one that promised no potential plotlines at all, turned out to be my savior. I just had to be desperate enough to see it. I really can't give a satisfactory explanation for it without summarizing my whole story up to this point and through the end--and I'm one of those writers that can't do that. The instant I tell someone my plot, it's DOA.

Today's main writing session was cut brief by Real Life™--dentist appointments, getting a new cell phone, trying to figure out how to use the new cell phone, etc. (I may relate the embarrassing events leading up to the new phone tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to the humble pie)--and was encumbered by all this inertia built up over the weekend. But towards the end, I think I could tell I was reaching a turning point.

Let's hope I did...am about 5K behind now. :)

^* Wow, really, you are? And I thought I needed to get a life.

Thought for the Lord's Day - #49

No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter, who doth not in some measure behold it by faith here in this world. Grace is a necessary preparation for glory, and faith for sight Where the subject (the soul) is not previously seasoned with grace and faith, it is not capable of glory or vision. Nay, persons not disposed hereby unto it cannot desire it, whatever they pretend; they only deceive their own souls in supposing that so they do. Most men will say with confidence, living and dying, that they desire to be with Christ, and to behold his glory; but they can give no reason why they should desire any such thing,-only they think it somewhat that is better than to be in that evil condition which otherwise they must be cast into for ever, when they can be here no more. If a man pretend himself to be enamoured on, or greatly to desire, what he never saw, nor was ever represented unto him, he doth but dote on his own imaginations. And the pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith whilst they are there in this world are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

- John Owen

Well, What Can You Say?

Really not a lot to say about the UI-BSU game today. Vandal fans had more than just habit/school pride going for us this year when we talked about our chances. Sadly, hope doesn't mean much on the football field when it runs into a ranked team really needing an impressive showing and a freshman quarterback on his second start.

Instead, I'll try to focus on the positive things about today...there were some, I just have to think about it a little...

Oh yeah, we had a pleasant time with my sister and niece...and technically with the friend my sister brought with her, just hard to count the friend as I think I heard her say 20 words in the 4 hours she spent here (she did talk more than that, but outside of those 20 words, they were all basically whispered to my sister). TLomL learned how to make a new appetizer/game day snack. My boys learned a little more about football, so in later life they'll be slightly less likely to embarrass themselves in social settings. I was able to get WonderMutt to not excitedly jump all over/terrify guests (for politeness sake, we won't go into the amount of work/time that took). We came up with a great number of creative ways to say "stupid Rotator cuff." My sister demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about the our alma mater (how does someone spend five years in that city, much less as a student and walk away not knowing about the "I" bench and "Hello Walk"?) and we had a good time laughing about that--I know when she visited me in high school I pointed those things out to her. We also got an important lesson in being thankful for the little things, cuz I'm sure we wouldn't remember any of those things right now if the game had been competitive for more than 30 seconds.


I'm going to show restraint and not rant about the local media acting like the game was a silly formality. Is a little respect that hard? Especially given the number of UI alums in their audience.

Nathan Enderle, may you get better soon...

Sure The Doctor Danced with Rose,

... but Capt. Jack can do just fine on his own.


When I saw this posted over at Sci Fi Wire, the only thing I could think was, "This guy came across as too straight to be cast in the lead of Will & Grace???" Oh well, rather have him as Capt. Jack/The Face of Bo anytime.