Tivo Alert

O'Reilly to Debate Alf. Tonight! I guess we'll see who the real puppet is.

Teddy Bear Imbroglio

I thought I'd seen everything. There are riots in the streets of Khartoum calling for the head of the fifty-something British teacher who had the temerity to name a Teddy Bear "Mohammed." The fifteen-day jail sentence was just far too lenient.

TEN THOUSAND people, some carrying knives and sticks, have marched on the capital of Sudan calling for the teacher jailed for naming a teddy bear Mohammed to be shot.

To be shot. I've long held that the arrogance of the Bush administration and their hubristic myopia with respect to other cultures has done the United States a great disservice (to put it very, very mildly.) But this, to me, is just too fucked up. Is this eighth-century bloodlust just a manifestation of poverty and hopelessness brought about by repressive theocratic regimes?

I doubt there's a very rich stand-up comedy scene in Sudan. Headline: 12 Killed by Angry Audience at Khartoum's Laugh Factory Open-Mic Night

Gumbel Bumble

For those of you who watched the Cowboys defeat the hated Packers last night, I think there's something we can all agree on: Bryant Gumbel is a shitty play-by-play guy. With four minutes left in the first-quarter, he had already mistakenly referred to the Cowboys as the Packers four times. At the conclusion of the game, he called Tony Romo "Rick Romo." My wife heard him refer to Brett Favre as "Frank." One time when Kevin Burnett came out of the game with an injury, Gumbel first said the injured player was Akin Ayodele, then said it was Bradie James, before finally settling on Burnett.

I'm sure play-by-play is much harder than it looks, but there's plenty of B and C-team guys out there that wouldn't make these fundamental errors that smack of a general lack of preparation.

Plenty more agreed. I googled "Bryant Gumbel play by play Cowboys Packers" and got a ton of results including flubs not mentioned above.

Thought Crimes

Let's go Orwellian...in a country that cherishes free speech, are ideas ever illegal?

I just read this piece in Slate about a new bill sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) that is cruising through Congress. The overt parts of the bill, which some have dubbed the "Thought Crimes" bill, don't seem too nasty. It basically forms a study group to look into homegrown terrorism. Luckily homegrown terrorism hasn't happened much in the US, except for Pro-Life abortion clinic bombers, Timothy McVeigh, high-school shooter-uppers, and some radical lefty enviro-terrorists.

However the undercurrents of the bill seem to swirl around the use of the internet as a means of dispensing some pretty nasty material (and I'm not talking about Britney Spears beaver). In a hearing about the bill, Harman said that Americans:

"no longer need to travel to foreign countries or isolated backwoods compounds to become indoctrinated by extremists or learn how to kill their neighbor. On the contrary, the Internet allows them to share violent goals and plot from the comfort of their own living rooms."

The author of the article, Dahlia Lithwick, concludes:

The point of this new legislation isn't just to interrupt existing homegrown terror plots but to do something about the radical ideas that inspire them. That may be a worthy goal, but it's assuredly a goal that implicates protected speech.

So here's the rub, as I see it. Ideas are OK, plots are not so OK. Free-speechers like me are faced with distinguishing between and idea and a plot...lots of slippery slopes here into murky waters. What about revolutionary talk about overthrowing the government? As I've heard, sometimes in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. Ain't that why we still have guns?

But, is it okay to post instructions for making a pipe-bomb, or an IED, what about a nucular weapon or biological weapon? My answer is a reluctant yes, because I think free speech is that important, and that we have the FBI, Homeland Security, Police for something other than doughnuts.

Would we prefer the antithesis, China, where they have hundreds of thousands of people whose sole job is to censor the internet, including censoring anything smacking of political criticism or democracy.

Of course it all comes back to the see-saw between freedom and security, with 9/11 being the current fulcrum. I'll always err on the side of freedom, but, in fairness, I don't want to dismiss those that are willing to trade a little freedom for security. My problem is that those are the same people that generally want to apply the manacles of "Traditional values" and "culture wars" with charactheristic missionary zeal. At some point in that murky swamp down from the slippery slope, my non-traditional values and countercultural thinking might be the next Thought Crime.

Steve L's Turkey Trot

I wanted to give props to our good friend Steve for holding his own Turkey Trot in Baghdad. Steve's been running in the Cowtown Turkey Trot for the last several years (if not the last decade...I haven't made one yet.) The problem was, he couldn't make it this year because he decided to stop complaining about Iraq and, instead, try to do something about it. So he loaded up the truck and moved to...Baghdad...with the State Department working on reconstruction projects. But Steve's a doer*, and it will come as no surprise to any that he organized his own Thanksgiving Run in the Green Zone. He emailed me that it came off quite well.

*Except for that one August day when he left us with a moving van full of boxes, a new house, and a tepid water hose (in a dry city), then went to see his son's soccer game.

Sweet ROCK N ROLL

OK, I've been deep into youtube tonight, so here's my last salvo:

YouTube Music Continued - Uncle Tupelo

One of my all time favorite bands that inspired a movement. Here's Uncle T in their formative years...

Townes

"Townes Van Zandt's the best songwriter in the world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." Said Steve Earle. This man was the line between brilliance and insanity.

Witness his issues, as evidenced in the brilliant biopic Be Here To Love Me which I encourage everyone to watch, but his brilliance as songwriter can not be challenged. As I've said in posts several years past (which I would link if I weren't so fucking lazy), I don't buy complaints about his voice. He's no Pavoracci, or some such, but his voice is incredibly evocative with respect to the songs he sings.

I love YouTube because I can see things like this:

Brilliant Music

Steve Earle has always been one of my favorite songwriters. He learned from the best, Ft. Worth born Townes Van Zandt. Here's Steve's tribute to Townes from Austin City Limits...singing about Townes iffy relationship with his hometown:

More Moving the Goalposts...

Since the days of "shock and awe" how many times have we read articles like this:

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

How long until we declare complete victory and leave?

Liars - Plamegate

I thought this was worth mentioning because I beat it to death back when it was breaking, but it's nice to see that Scotty McClellan doesn't like being lied to and is willing to name a few names. It's no surprise that all the top dogs were involved, I think we knew it all along. It just makes Bush look like more of a sap than we already thought. They duped him too. "I'll fire anyone involved." Indeed.

Scare Tactics - Common in Monarchies and Totalitarian Regimes

What an asshole:

President Hugo Chavez warned his supporters on Friday that anyone voting against his proposed constitutional changes would be a "traitor".

But it sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? I tried to include one of Bush or Cheney's comments about opposition to the war being traitorious, but when I googled "Bush Cheney traitor" I got about a million hits and none of them had to do with their rhetoric.

Crosswords

In case there are other readers that enjoy the occasional crossword puzzle, I thought I'd provide a useful link.

I'm a crossword fiend, and I might do six or seven crosswords a day. Crosswords typically get more difficult during the week with Monday the easiest and Saturday the hardest. The big Sunday puzzle is generally about a Thursday level of difficulty. The New York Times is the gold standard for crosswords, but there are many other good ones out there (that you don't have to pay for to get online). Other than the NYT, my favorite weekly puzzle is the NY Sun, followed closely by Newsday. The USA today is somewhat challenging. The Washington Post is pretty easy except for their Sunday Stumper. I really enjoy Newsday's Saturday stumper, which I just spent an hour solving.

Of course, you have to be a regular puzzler to be able to solve them as many of the answers are quite unique. To start you off, a sea eagle is an erne, and a high nest is an aerie.

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, the unique American holiday. I spent mine with members of the Mineola tribe that had been run out of their land by smallpox and musket. Just kidding.

I watched the Cowboys pants the Jets on an outside patio in the midst of large snowflakes and even larger flagons of wine. I've spent the day after by not shopping (except for a brief foray into the local liquor store), napping, feasting on leftovers, and watching my energized Aggies kick a little longhorn butt for the second year in a row.

How do we know what we want?

Reading the comments from the "Am I Pawn Shop Material" posts, I thougt I'd put out a question. When did you you figure out what you wanted to spend your life doing?

I haven't figured it out yet, but many of my readers have...some early, some late. I'd like to hear how you came to know your calling.

80's Videos

There's a contest for the best and worst video of the 80's going on over on Andrew Sullivan's site. I don't remember the video below from my adolescence, and that's probably a good thing. Check out the Dog Police...

Perspective - National Review

The National Review. Yeah, that's right....The bastion of the right. Get ready people. Check this shit out from John Derbyshire.

He says that liberals "want to transform people", and conservatives "want to leave people alone."

Given this definition, consider me a straight ticket man...on Elephant side.

Of course this is a magnificent lie. We all know the transformational inertia is on the right side, not the least of which are the Christianists who have missionary zeal behind their efforts. Just check out the greatest horror movie ever...Jesus Camp. The Christianists seek to impose their version of morality on the entire population.

Unfortunately, their version of morality keeps getting undermined by their leaders who do not act according to their votes and/or rhetoric; there seems to be a documentable trend highlighting more than a few Republicans hypocritically versifying while maintaining lifestyles that include hedonism and gay lechery. This seems to fit well with the recent scandals involving Catholic priests. We'll leave correlations between extreme piety and extreme lechery for another day. However, I don't believe it is coincidental that all of the exposed lechers are also people that spoke highly against lechery.

As for the claim that conservatives will "leave me alone" let's consider all of the activities the CIA, FBI, and NSA are now conducting against citizens. The Republicans (no longer conservatives) would have you believe that anything they do is in the interest of "National Security." Frankly this has become a party of "we know better, trust us." This theory is completely divergent with Goldwater-era conservatism and really turn a so-called government into a nanny-state.

This makes my election decision decidedly difficult becaust there's no real candidate that wants to let me be free. ( Ron Paul is a social conservative....he wants to tell you what to with you womb.)

In fairness, let me addres the "want to transform" liberals. Well, they've been out of power since 1994 for the most part so it's hard to evaluate their work. I guess Kennedy kind of agreed with Bush on the No Child bill, but that's been a disastrous failure. I'll be happy to criticize liberals once they've done something, but, right now, it seems like I can count on a liberal to leave me alone a lot better than a conservative.

And if you want to know who you should vote for, go here. As a statistical acolyte, this site has some cred. Let us know if who you like is who is chosen for you.

Moving the Goalposts

Brief post: I know I'm dollar short on this but I thought it was worth documenting for posterity:

The "end" of the "surge" was political reconciliation. The "means" was some additional forces and some new strategy. Well, the "means," by all notices, has been mildly effective. Yet when the critical September deadline occurred (which was, to most Americans, advertised to be a Go/No Go decision) we ended up with groveling equivocation by everyone. More of the same, we somehow agree to keep doing the same in the absence of any Iraqi political movement.

Streetlamp in Telluride

Click the pic to get a larger image...and see the great detail in the lamp.

Old Website

I had forgotten that I used to have a website. I did a little searching and was able to find it. It appears that this was about six or seven years ago, back when our only cat was the Sheep and when my digital photo library was pretty limited. I need to update this with the two newest cats (which are both old news and I have about a thousand pics of each) and new pics.

Am I Pawn Shop Material?

Here's an area where I need some feedback. I was solicited by a headhunter for an IT job locally. The thing is, it's a pawn shop. Worse thing is, it's a purveyor of usurious payday loans. Most people think us atheists are hedonistic, amoral bloodsuckers. But that, of course, is not true with me (as most readers know from personal experience.) Sure I like to drink scotch and smoke cigars but so do a lot of so called religious folk. As we've seen from the news over the last twenty years or so (and from personal experience), there's a lot of hypocrisy in those that would urge you to live as Jesus suggested. But that's a tangent....

So tell me, dear reader, do I have any business working in the pawn and usury trade? My initial thinking is no, but I might be persuaded by a good argument. Thoughts?

While I need answers on the above, let's ask a deeper question. Do you believe in the product that your employers produce, or do you just do it for the money? I had a tough time at RadioShack because I thought it was a tired concept with a (literally) dying market, even though I was quite happy working IT projects that had little direct relevance to the end-product. To what degree does support of your product matter to you? If I can make a good living making IED's or nucular weapons or toxic foreign policy memos, does it matter? Is our conscience today as connected as it should be or are we just looking to make a buck? I'd love to hear from someone who has turned down a lucrative offer on moral/philosophical grounds.

If you got a 100% raise, would you work for McDonald's? Halliburton? Moveon.org? (pick your demon.)

Anonymous Posting

As info, if you don't want to give your name when posting comments, you can post anonymously. This might be of value if you're going to throw your employer under the bus. I would, of course, prefer names so I know what kind of beast I'm dealing with....but I understand that there are people out there that actually care about their careers. Which should be a decent segue (if you're reading bottom up) into the next post.

Rabbit Run and other things literature

I've replaced a few Scotch benders with a reading bender. I just finished Rabbit Run, John Updike's first book published in 1960, I believe. I'm sure it was rather scandalous at the time, but now is pretty tame. It very well may have paved the way for Philip Roth and other major 60's writers who dealt with coarser subject matter. Just wondering if anyone else has read this and would like to discuss further. I've never read a book before where there was not one likable or remotely sympathetic character.

I think this is one of the things that makes the book grittily realistic...there is no such thing as pure good. I've read books with less sympathetic protagonists...the main character in Irvine Welsh's "Filth" comes to mind, and some might argue that Ignatius from A Confederacy of Dunces is irredeemably bad.

On another literary note, rumors abound from the Christianist-nanny goat right that they will be putting the full-court press on the upcoming movie, "The Golden Compass." This is because the writer, Philip Pullman, is one of the most outspoken atheists in England, and they believe the book/movie is a sinister plot to cleanse their children from religion. I read the book, and while there are definitely anti-religious overtones...the church is portrayed as a "magisterium," I don't think there is too much atheism that a child will be able to glean. The Catholic church and the current religious right only wish that they were a "magisterium." Kids'll like the big armored polar bears and will be oblivious to any message.

I read Richard Ford's "Lay of the Land" which finishes off his trilogy that began with "The Sportwriter." It was excellent despite a strange twist at the end that was probably unnecessary.

Other recent readings: The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald, reread), Shakespeare (bio, Bill Bryson), Thunderbolt Kid (memoir, Bill Bryson), Freakonomics (Dubner, Levitt)

Cowboy Quarterbacks

It's very timely that I ran across this over on the Observer's blog. Bruce and I spent quite a bit of time trying to remember all of the Dallas Cowboys starting quarterbacks last Saturday. Here's a vid that goes through all of them...

Christmas Season

I don't think I'm quite the holiday sourpuss in 2007 as I was back in 2005. This, of course, is always subject to change as events unfold. It is with this sentiment that I provide the loyal readership with advance warning of your holiday favorite TV shows, so get your Tivo ready:

Nov. 27 -- A Charlie Brown Christmas, 7 p.m. on ABC. Repeated at the same time on Dec. 3rd.

Nov. 28 -- Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas at 7:30 p.m. on ABC

Dec. 4 -- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 7 p.m. on CBS. Also appearing: Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, 7 p.m. on ABC.

Dec. 7 -- Frosty the Snowman and Frosty Returns, 7 p.m. on CBS.

Dec. 14 -- It's A Wonderful Life, 7 p.m. on NBC. Repeated at the same time on Christmas Eve.

See the whole list here.

The Future Energy Source?

The new Corporate Overlords of the Carter & Burgess, Jacobs Engineering, continue to amaze me with the breadth of their reach into really interesting fields. I may ultimately be made redundant, but this company is into some cool shit.

Yesterday as I'm making my way to the parking garage, I met a C&B employee on the elevator who went straight into a discussion of Helium 3 and how Jacobs is heavily involved with the research to make Helium 3 a future energy source. Helium 3 is very clean and can put out a tremendous amount of energy using very little of the product. There's one small problem with Helium 3, it's really only available on the moon.

Here's the lowdown from the article linked above:

Scientists estimate there are about1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousandsof years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 ton scould supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year

The scientists say getting a Helium 3 manufacturing facility up would cost around six billion bucks, which is a War in Iraq rounding error.

While we're on the topic, I don't understand why West Texas isn't covered with giant windmills. This is bleak countryside that could easily be used to generate mega-megawatts. I'm sure there are cost of production issues that make it less favorable in the short-run than petroleum, but the wind is not going to stop, which should lead to favorable payback period calculations.

Job Opportunities

For those of you that are not satisfied with your current station in life and may be looking for an exciting career change, I've found something that you might want to see. It will provide you the opportunity to interact with different cultures and appears to offer very stable work.

"We're trying to catch them but the difficulties are a shortage of monkey catchers."

Of course I'm referring to the ongoing monkey crisis in New Delhi, India. An Indian police official said:

"Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we're not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult,"

The monkeys are sacred animals, just like cows, in the Hindu culture that sees monkeys as reincarnations of one of the polytheistic religion's gods.

"I was talking to someone at my door at around 11 pm when a monkey appeared," Naseema, who goes by one name, told the Times of India. "As I moved inside, the monkey followed and sank its teeth in my baby's leg."

Six more bites were reported Monday in Shastri Park, while in an upscale neighbourhood in central Delhi, a rogue monkey bounded into the residence of Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, The Indian Express said.

You've probably heard about the muckety-muck that met an untimely end a month or so ago while trying to fight off the marauding simians with a stick. He was on his balcony and was forced over the edge, falling to his death.

India is the next big up-and-coming superpower and largest democracy in the world. With its grip tightening around the global IT development and helpdesk world and other industries, will this calamity derail the flattening of the world? Will the offshore workers be able to fight their way through the crazed beasts to get to work and answer our help desk calls? It's time we answer their call.

Political Tip-Off

As past readers will know, this blog likes to dabble in politics. So a little about me, for new folks:

I hate Republicans.

I hate Democrats.

I think Bush is a monarchist who prides loyalty over competence to a catastrophic fault; he is a Christianist and a dumbass and he probably smells like a soiled diaper. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their ilk are dung beetles. Colin Powell was a good man who should have quit. Actually, anyone associated with the administration are now covered with the fetid stank of a cronyist militaristic constitution-hating compost-heap.

I detest the shrill wing of the liberal left. The left is a castrated cadre that is incapable of coalescing. While I wish more people would stand up in protest like crazy Cindy Sheehan, I wish they'd stand up with a more convincing message. Sheehan is the color-guard for the extreme left and will only serve to alienate. I'm not fond of Nancy Pelosi and I think the Democratic-led congress has been atrocious...notwithstanding the lack of a filubuster-proof majority in the Senate.

I consider myself a "Radical Centrist." I typically vote third party because I hate the other two, and. frankly my vote does not matter in Texas. I'd say radical because all parties these days are ruled by radicals who are funded by extreme interests. There doesn't seem to be anybody with money willing to contribute to a coalition style government like there is in European parliamentary democracies. I don't see why every other democracy in the world can support multiple parties, but we're subjected to worse and worser.

The GOP and Donkeys have plenty of internal divisions. The GOP has the schism between the awful social conservatives and the tolerable economic conservatives (at least their shit is based on data.) The Donkeys have separation based on war ideology as well as the division between "yellow-dog" and "blue-dog" persuasions and they are incapable of finding a coherent message.

Yes, I like third parties but I'm not falling for the Ron Paul bullshit because he's aligned with the Christianists and maybe worse.

I am a strong proponent of pragmatism and moral relativism (which our current prez eschews.) I don't believe the world is black-and-white. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, this is apparently becoming relevant to the Shrub administration with regard to Pakistan (and everywhere else). They bleat Wilsonian about bringing democracy to the world, yet support a corrupt dictator whose country is harboring Public Enemy Numero Uno. Said country happens to be nucular, so all bets are off on the democracy thang.

As for Rudy, he's another aspiring cronyist dictator. Witness Kerik. He scares me more than anything else, regardless of his lefty positions on abortion and gays.

I believe I've stopped making sense. With the lack of a good third-party alternative, I'm leaning Obama. I don't like Hillary-robot and I think she's the only thing that can energize the elephants to enough turnout for another victory. I read about her feeding questions to an audience and it sounds all too much like Bush's hand-picked audiences of his prior campaigns. We do not need another autocrat, which is surely what we'd get with Giuliani the megalomaniac, and I fear Hillary also.

Thoughts?

I've always had a feeling oenaphiles were a fraud...

Wine experts beware. Read the whole story here.

"So much for objectivity. But results like this shouldn't be surprising.
I've blogged about this before, but it's such a cool experiment that it's worth
repeating. In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted
two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet
invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked
like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white
wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop
the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to
describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed
its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white
wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a
middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy
grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that
they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the
differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was
"agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was
"weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the
fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was."

While I know many folks that consider themselves fine arbiters of the grape, I'm tempted to call bullshit. I would love to hold a blind taste-test to see if anyone can separate the wheat from the chaff. We'll go screw-top to grand cru, white to red, Loire to Napa...any takers?

It's much easier with scotch...I generally like the one that's in front of me.

Whither Gas?

I'll try and stir up some controversy now that I'm back up and posting. I read on another blog that one of the jillion gas outfits in FW is planning on drilling practically in downtown. Maybe it's Chesapeake, I forget and I don't want to go seek out the reference, but the plans are to drill right behind (like 100 feet) the old T&P Warehouse on Lancaster. While I'm aware of all the benefits gas drilling and its associated revenue will do for the city, isn't this a bit risky? If we've mastered the art of horizontal drilling, why so close to downtown? I jes don wan no splosions. Pro/Con? What about all the schoolyard drillin'? Just primin' the pump.

A Year Later...

I sit in my favored spot on the patio, enjoying a cigar and a scotch (which my wife had hidden, but I found), whilst reddened leaves from my crape myrtle are unhooked by infrequent breezes and flutter onto my keyboard. At odd intervals, pecans are jarred loose from their branches and fall like lugnuts onto the roof. Our friendly cat, Poofus, sits idly on top of an outdoor ottoman across from me. She is safe, and ignores all of the menacing sounds. It is always unclear on the patio whether she is protecting me or I am protecting her.

It is November 12, 2007 and I am clothed in summer-wear...athletic shorts that have never seen an athletic endeavor, bare feet, and my favorite shirt which was purchased in the summer of 2001 (or thereabouts) for one American dollar at the annual charity sale held at the Possum Kingdom Volunteer firehouse. The shirt advertises the 1996 4-H Horse Show in Abilene, with a horsehead emblazoned over the 4H cloverleaf. The shirt is very large, as is necessary to gird my supra-Rubenesque torso. It is spattered with random food, blood, tobacco, and other detritus of my loafing existence. It has holes. Many holes, caused by overzealous cats and drunken collisions with sharp edges between the drinking zone and the sleeping zone. This shirt is a winner.

I noticed my last post was about a year ago, just short of Armistice Day 2006. What's changed?

I came in second at the club billiard tournament for the fourth year in a row. I'm going to have to get my bridesmaid dress altered. But I did get to shoot a few games with women's champ Vivian Villarreal.


Our frequent contributor and conservative voice from times past Jim is now a talking head on CNBC.

Seems like I've had about four jobs since my last post. I'd say that I'm now a project manager with Carter & Burgess, except Carter & Burgess just got acquired. Who knows what the future holds?

It appears the local FW blog scene is maturing. I've recently caught on to some of the following sites...some focusing on local politics (gas drilling), some on architcture, a few on food, some on culture, and some photography (with some live music photography included.)

Our twenty-year reunion was held. I was involved with the initial planning, but was frankly too busy drinking and regretting to follow through to the execution. These were all mistakes.

My wife and I went to Telluride in May with a buddy of ours which was a great getaway in a truly idyllic setting. The dog:human ratio in Telluride is rapidly approaching 1:1, which is not a bad thing, and I never saw dogshit anywhere. The girls there tend to the granola side, which allowed me to spend more time looking at dogs. Here's a few pics that I'm working on:

and...

and....

As was the old routine, I hope to post frequent topical posts that generate comments and conversation. We had a good thing going there for a while until I volunteered for separation from RadioShack and too much time on my hands for anything but waking up late and drinking late. Cogent thinking wasn't really in the mental portfolio back then.

I don't know that I'll be able to keep up the posting rate that I maintained while I was waiting to be laid off, but I hope to be able to chime in a few times a week. As always, anyone that wants a forum is welcome to become a poster and all readers should feel free to comment at will, but be aware that the comment forum is a lion's den...so if you're posting on issues, be prepared.

I'll be following this up with an email with link to all of our former contributors. Forward as you please.