Desktop Meme

Via Toast, who has too much crap on his desktop.

Is Tom Cruise crazy?

I imagine most people have seen this Tom Cruise Scientology video, or at least parts of it. People are tripping over themselves to talk about how nutty he is. And he's pretty nutty, to be sure. But put his nuttiness aside for a minute. His demeanor in the video isn't really that crazy. He looks intense, at times, and full of conviction. What makes most people see it as creepy and wacky is that he's feeling this way about Scientology, which is unscientific mumbo jumbo.

Now contrast this with this Reader's Digest interview with Denzel Washington. Now the interview is general, not specific to religion, but religion does permeate it. He's very spiritual, he reads the Bible all the time, puts God first etc... Now is Denzel any less nutty than Tom? Can you not picture him in a church video talking about his relationship with God with the same intensity Cruise does with Scientology?

The main difference I see is that Tom's cult doesn't have quite as many followers as Denzel's cult. Are Thetans and audits any nuttier than angels or transubstantiation?

Alligators

My son doesn't believe in them.

The madness of the primaries

The primaries make no sense. According to the rules, a candidate needs a majority of the available delegates to secure the nomination. But the press covers these races as if delegates don't matter at all. I was listening to NPR this week, and they were discussing the Republican race. They clearly considered McCain the leader and talked of Romney as if it would be an upset if he won. But Romney has far more pledged delegates, and is virtually tied with McCain in the next big state, Florida. Likewise, the media portrayed Nevada as a big win for Clinton, even though she and Obama received the same number of delegates. These are the same major media outlets that had just about buried her after Iowa, where she tied Obama for delegates.

So there seem to be two commodities at play here - the delegates, and much more importantly, it seems, that nebulous thing, momentum. Momentum certainly shouldn't be discounted. I think Giuliani is about to discover that a big lead before the primaries can evaporate pretty quickly if you lose it. But in a race like this, I think it's still too early to be talking of momentum as if that's all that matters.

There are many problems with our primary system - it's undemocratic (what's up with these ridiculous Democratic super delegates?), it doesn't accurately reflect our diverse population, but most importantly, I think, is that the major media outlets all but control the outcome. I believe this is where momentum becomes important. When the media anoints a front-runner or two coming out of New Hampshire, they sway opinions, just by the force and volume of their coverage. Supporters of other candidates get discouraged and either drop out or figure they'd better make their vote count and vote for one of the front-runners. Many pundits have already crowned Clinton and McCain. You'd never know that most of the delegates are still up for grabs if you only follow CNN or MSNBC, or even, sadly, NPR. And I guess the really sad thing is that they aren't in any practical sense. The media has succeeded in making John Edwards a marginal figure. Giuliani, who once led in national polls is running on fumes.

This all leads me to an article on CNN tonight. After all this coverage pushing one candidate over another without regard to delegate count, CNN drops this line - "The South Carolina primary is also the last time Democratic voters will weigh in with any significance before "Super Tuesday" February 5". The Florida primary is on January 29, and all the candidates are on the ballot. So do we suddenly not count because our delegates aren't going to be seated (supposedly)? When did delegates start to matter? I guess when we got in the way of the media's Super Tuesday coverage.

Cowboys Stadium

Now that football season is over (what?, no there aren't any games on Sunday lalalalala), we're looking ahead not only to next season, but to the season after that. In 2009, The Cowboys will play in their new stadium in Arlington, TX. I knew they were building a new stadium, but I had no idea what kind of building this would be. If you haven't seen it, you really ought to click through and look at the pictures. I should have known Jerry Jones wouldn't build just any new stadium. It's just one more thing for Cowboys fans to love and one more thing for the haters to pile on.

The new stadium will seat over 80,000 (expandable to 100,000), and season tickets are on offer for the first time in a while. We put down our $200 to get on the list for season tickets in 2009. If we're able to snag some, we're going to split the seats with a friend of ours and sell the tickets for the games we can't get to.

There is a difference

With the primaries heating up and the prospects of something new for the first time in 8 long years looming, I'm seeing comments here and there about how it really doesn't matter. That electing Hillary or even Obama will just be more of the last 15 years, which weren't so great. I know that the congressional Democrats are cowards, and I know that the likely Democratic nominee will be nearly as beholden to big-money interests as the Republican nominee. But we heard a lot of the same talk back in 2000. Nader was pushing his "there is no difference" message. Gore of 2000 didn't have anywhere near the cachet Gore of 2008 has, and he was perceived as an extension of Clintonian politics. In light of this, I think it's worth reminding ourselves what the differences really are. There are several big things we can reasonably assume would have been different under a Gore administration, and not just in the fantasy SNL sense.

No invasion of Iraq.

No tax cuts for the wealthy

No cuts in family planning funding for providers who do abortion counseling

No gutting of FEMA

No illegal wiretapping

An active agenda promoting carbon reduction

No illegal detention and torture

No suppression of science from federal agencies

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. There are certainly things we wouldn't happy with. But I'd give a lot to have this stuff.

Shit I'm tired of

In a TV show or movie, when someone is standing or walking in the street and is suddenly hit by a car, or even better, a bus which comes seemingly out of nowhere. Most recently I've seen this on the new Terminator series...twice in two episodes. And just off the top of my head I remember pretty much the same thing from Final Destination, Lost, Daybreak, and The Black Donnelys. I guess the reason writers like this kind of thing is that it's so sudden and unexpected for the viewer. The flaw, however, is that the person who is hit by the bus should be able to see all that stuff that is off camera for the viewer.

This also extends to the person driving a car, with the camera looking at them from the passenger seat, when they're suddenly blindsided by a car slamming into the driver's side door which also seems to be quite popular these days.

Dallas postmortem

Anytime you travel to see a sporting event, you run the risk of your team losing. We've been pretty lucky. We drove to Dallas in 1992 and saw the Cowboys beat the Redskins on their way to the Super Bowl. We saw them again in 1992 in Atlanta when they clinched the division and Deion threw a bench on the sidelines. And, although it was only a day trip, I count the 1993 FSU-Florida game in Gainesville, because that's a hard place to go and leave a loser. The forces of good won all of these games. But our luck ran out yesterday. Let's break the trip down.


The Game - Disappointing is too tame. It was crushing, all the more so because it was there for the taking. The Giants played well, but were certainly beatable. I'll sound like a bitter fan here, but the story of the game was Cowboy mistakes. The Giants made few to none, and the Cowboys made several costly ones. 11 penalties to the Giants' 3, including the drive-extending offsides on the first possession, followed shortly by 3 Cowboys missing an easy tackle on Toomer, who scored the first touchdown. Dropped passes, crucial penalties and poor execution in general plagued the Cowboys the whole game.

But even after all that, the defense made a couple of good stops and we had the ball with nearly 2 minutes and 50 yards to go. One thing this team has been really good at is responding under pressure. But they looked terrible on the last drive. No spikes, an awful draw to Barber with under a minute left and 1 timeout. And then the timeout was wasted when the sideline official blew the call and kept the clock running after Witten got out of bounds.

I'm not reading any post-game analysis, because who wants to relive that nightmare? But I would hope that all the talking heads have shut up about Romo and his December slump now (although I'm sure they haven't). Romo played well, made a couple of bad plays but also a few good ones and didn't turn the ball over (the last desperation play doesn't count), pretty much what Eli did on the other side (and you know he's getting sloppy BJ's from everyone now). I really think it showed that we didn't have a credible deep threat. Owens was healthy enough to play, but he was clearly not playing at his level from most of the year.

Soon enough, I'll turn to next year and realize we're still contenders and ought to be for a few years more. That's a nice change from the last 10 years, when any joy in the success we did have was tempered by the knowledge that it was mostly a fluke. But for now I'll have to content myself with the thought that the Giants will go to Lambeau and be exposed for the gutty but overachieving team that they are.


Texas Stadium - For a stadium built in the middle of nowhere, the parking is really shitty. No park-n-rides or stadium shuttles anywhere. All the parking is miles from the stadium and costs a fortune. And all the lots are designed so that there are massive, unmanned bottlenecks when people try to leave. Extremely poorly done. I really hope that they think about these things as they're building the new stadium. Jackonville's parking is far better, even more so considering that the stadium is built downtown. I can park a mile from the stadium for $5. Yesterday we parked at least 3 miles out and had to pay $25.

Texas Stadium was finished in 1971 and you can see the age, but also the innovation. There's no club like in more modern stadia, but there are skyboxes everywhere. You can see how it was state-of-the art 35 years ago. But it's certainly showing its age now. Rust and wear everywhere, and horribly designed bathrooms. The men's room had a line that probably had 100 people in it. All you need for the men is a 20' long trough. Why build a place with 6 urinals per bathroom? While Texas Stadium is a a mecca for Cowboys fans everywhere, it's definitely time for an upgrade.

The hometown fans - I hate to be critical of my fellow fans, but fuck, these hometown fans need to learn how to be a good home crowd. Mainly the noise level. When the other team has the ball, especially in a big game like this, you have to make noise - constant, deafening noise (we did our part). The acoustics are certainly ok. But while it was always far noisier on Giants' possessions, it never approached the frenzy it should have except for a few 3rd downs and goal-line plays. It was far, far noisier at the FSU-Alabama game we went to this year, and the stadium here isn't really designed to hold it in. For all that the Cowboy haters love to accuse us non-Texan Cowboys fans of being bandwagoners, I think the non-native fans are probably better than the home fans in our level of passion.

Overall - I don't regret going, and I'm sure we'll do it again, but I'm not going to lie and say it was all good. It was fun getting away. We love to travel and we love to fly, so that was fun. But the loss turned what would have been a spectacular trip into an ok trip. As I said before, that's the risk you take.

Hey, that's our island from the air! We live near the airport and have planes fly by the house all the time. But we've never been able to see our neighborhood from the air for various reasons. Not to mention it's a lot harder to identify landmarks from the air than you might think.

It's NOT hard to beat a team three times in one season.

Anytime a team is playing a division rival that they swept during the season in the playoffs, as the Cowboys are this week, we always hear the tired argument that it's so hard to beat a team three times in one season as the hope for the team that's lost the first two. However, it's just not true. The team trying to sweep is 11-6, and 9-3 when they're at home. The worst part of this argument is that it's normally made by people on TV who have access to enough information to realize that it's not true.

Electoral compass

I ran across this at Chosha's blog. There are a lot of these things floating around, but this one was quick and easy, and the questions covered a nice range of subjects. In addition to plotting you on the familiar social/economic graph, you can compare your answers to each question with each candidate's answers as derived from their stated positions, and link to the quotes and other evidence used to support it.

I was a little surprised that by their reckoning, Clinton is farther to the economic left than either Edwards or Obama. I was not surprised that I ended up as a socialist libertine.

Sweet Jags of Mine

The sports talk show I listen to in the morning put together a cover of "Sweet Caroline" called "Sweet Jags of Mine". The production values are a little ummm... rough, but it's fun. Dan Hicken, who also wrote the lyrics, sings with full-throated abandon and his enthusiasm makes up for the fact that he really can't sing. The Tony in the background is Tony Boselli. The song is about the upcoming Jags-Pats game so it has a short shelf life. Other "hits" include "Grady" (about DL Grady Jackson), to the tune of "Lady", "Tebow", to the tune of "Hey Jude", "Reggi-lution" to the tune of "Revolution" (about WR Reggie Williams), and "Jack and By-ron", to "Jack and Diane" of course. Oh and "Honolulu" to the tune of "Kokomo", I think, lobbying for Fred Taylor to go to the Pro Bowl. He's got a knack for these.

I'm not a Jaguars fan, as anyone who reads this blog knows, but I am this weekend. It's the duty of all red-blooded NFL fans to oppose the evil empire up in Foxboro.

Make sure you turn the volume down before playing.

We're going to the playoffs!

Yes, next Sunday, January 13, Michelline and I will be at Texas Stadium to watch the Cowboys trying to make their way to the NFC championship game. It was a spur of the moment thing. We found that Stubhub had a lot of tickets available for a reasonable price (and we didn't get screwed by the seller this time, the package is already shipping via FedEx). That along with a couple of $300 airline vouchers we picked up in February after volunteering to be bumped meant this would be a relatively inexpensive trip.

This will only be our fourth non-exhibition Cowboys game and our first ever visit to a playoff game. Not to mention our second game at Texas Stadium. The first game was the season opener in 1992 against Washington. The atmosphere was incredible. The Redskins were defending champs, but the Cowboys were coming off an 11-5 season and everyone knew they were on the way up. The big thing I remember is Kelvin Martin's TD on a punt return and Issiac Holt blocking a punt for a safety. And it was really loud. I'm very interested to see what the atmosphere is like for a playoff game.

I know that the Cowboys can win the game, whether they're playing the Redskins, Giants or Buccaneers, but I am a little concerned after their lackluster finish. Barely escaped in Detroit, laid an egg at home against the Eagles, and, although the game was meaningless, the first team played horribly against the Redskins in the first half last week. But the good thing is that we're going by ourselves. The only Dallas loss I witnessed in person came last year in Jacksonville in the Jags season opener. I figure that was because John was with us. Now we're getting back to our 1992 roots, and the luck should be with us.

Year end meme, Chris edition

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before? Hmmm, not much. I did things in a pool that I've never done before, in a pool. Let's leave it at that.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Didn't make them last year, and won't this year. I do want to get back down to a 34 from my current 36, but I'm not calling it a resolution.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No

4. Did anyone close to you die? No.

5. What places did you visit? Orlando, Indianapolis, London, Several places in South Carolina, Atlanta, Miami, Cozumel and Grand Cayman.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? Less debt.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Apparently none.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year? I was a fantastic husband, father, and employee.

9. What was your biggest failure? I can't think of any failures. There were things I didn't get done, but I'll get around to those.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Just regular stuff.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Michelline said the pool, but we actually started buying that in 2006, and I'm already slightly regretting it anyway. I would have to say either my HDDVR or our anniversary cruise.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Tony Romo. Man it's been a long 10 years waiting for a franchise QB.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Appalled and depressed is too strong, but since she won't read this, I'll have to say I continue to be disappointed in Tori's lack of effort in well, anything. She's a good kid with a good heart, but she won't apply herself to anything or take responsibility for anything. Michelline and I don't know what to do.

14. Where did most of your money go? In cash, to the mortgages. In debt, to the swimming pool.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The Christmas season, starting with Thanksgiving. Not only did we have the two big holidays, we also had a 3-day trip to Orlando for Christmas shopping, a trip to Disney where we met the Furious clan, and a 5-night cruise.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007? I don't know if I'll really associate it with 2007 in particular, but I first heard the Spring Awakening soundtrack this year. It's really good.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) Happier or sadder? About the same, I guess.
b) thinner or fatter? Maybe a bit fatter.
c) richer or poorer? Richer in income, poorer in debt.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? More work around the house.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Eat.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? Pretty much the same as this year, at home with Michelline's parents and sister. Then we went to my parents' house in the evening for dessert.
21. Did you fall in love in 2007? Nope, only happened once.

22. How many one-night stands? Too few...

23. What was your favorite TV program? Battlestar Galactica

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2007? I think I went to dinner with my parents, but I'm not sure.

25. What was the best book you read? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? I mentioned Spring Awakening already, and I'd add Pink Martini, whom I heard on an NPR interview. I've got 3 of their albums now.

27. What did you want and get? HDDVR

28. What did you want and not get? Not much

29. What was your favorite film of this year? The Simpsons Movie

30. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Immeasurably? Not much. There are a few things that I would like to have done, but nothing that would have been so much more satisfying.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? Jeans and t-shirts. Same as it has been for several years.

33. What kept you sane? I'm always sane. Unless I'm always insane. Who knows?

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? After seeing Knocked Up, I got a little movie star crush on Katherine Heigel. Damn, she's hot.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? There's so much with this administration and the Democrats spinelessness. What moves me the most is the violation of due process and basic human rights.

36. Who did you miss? Nobody, really.

37. Who was the best new person you met? Weird question. Who was my favorite person that I didn't know before? I met some neat kids on Libby's tee-ball team.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. Nothing I didn't already know.

Year-End Meme

Via Toast, who promises that my 2008 will suck if I don't do it.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before? Moved to a small town.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't do New Year's resolutions. If something is important enough for me to do, then why am I going to wait around until the new year to do it?

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? I'm not sure if this means someone who is close to me as in a fried or family, or just someone who is nearby while giving birth. But since neither happened, I'm covered with a no.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Nope.

5. What places did you visit? We went to Universal Studios in July. I'm not sure if we went anywhere else this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? A free house.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? If any dates from 2007 were etched in my memory, they weren't etched very well, since nothing comes to mind.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year? I won the Daytona 500*.

9. What was your biggest failure? Me? Fail? Come on, you're talking about the winner of the Daytona 500 here*.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I've got this pain in my neck that won't seem to go away.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Nothing stands out. I bought my TV at the very end of 2006, so I'll just count that, since all my enjoyment of it came in 2007.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? I don't make a habit of celebrating the behavior of others.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? I don't really get depressed, but I have to go with the New York Mets.

14. Where did most of your money go? Rent.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? That's a lot of reallies, I don't think I got that excited by anything.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007? I have no idea.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) Happier or sadder? About the same, I guess.
b) thinner or fatter? I think about the same, maybe slightly thinner.
c) richer or poorer? Richer, but just a little.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Read, I'd always like to read more.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Work.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? This sounds like it means 2006, but since this is the 2007 meme, that would be stupid, so I'll assume it means 2007 and say I spent Christmas at home with my family.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007? No.

22. How many one-night stands? I lose track.

23. What was your favorite TV program? Lost, with The Wire right behind. Actually, I waver between these two depending on which I watched last.

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2007? I don't remember. Probably went out to dinner or something.

25. What was the best book you read? Probably Of Fire And Night, Book 5 in The Saga of the Seven Suns, by Kevin J. Anderson

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? I'm not much of a musical explorer.

27. What did you want and get? Something, I'm sure, but nothing comes to mind.

28. What did you want and not get? A Wii.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? I like I am Legend a lot, but that was the last movie I saw, so it probably stands out more than others.

30. Did you make some new friends this year? There are new people at work that I like, but I don't know if that really counts.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? More money.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? I'm not too hung up on fashion. I buy all my clothes at Wal-Mart.

33. What kept you sane? I hate questions like this. It implies that I would go insane, but for something holding me back from it.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I don't think I really "fancied" anyone.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? The Democrats bending over and taking it up the ass from Bush and the Republicans, despite the voters giving them a majority in Congress. Way to miss the point, assholes.

36. Who did you miss? Can't think of anyone.

37. Who was the best new person you met? New person? I didn't meet any babies this year.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. I got nothing.


* OK, not really, but it's not like you know who really won it anyway.

Happy Festivus

I almost forgot.

PapaJohns.com Bowl

I just noticed this game was on, and I couldn't help but wonder, why not just the Papa John's Bowl? Why do they need to stick the .com on there? I can understand if it was an internet company, like some of the recent bowls. And I can understand that Papa John's is apparently trying to push their web site. But frankly, if there is someone out there who wants Papa John's pizza, and doesn't realize that PapaJohns.com is their website, then they're probably too stupid to order pizza online anyway.

Anniversary Cruise Day 6

Today's our last sea day and our last day of the cruise. I think 5 nights is just enough. I really enjoyed the one 7 nighter we took, but those are more expensive and harder to plan the time off. It's not too hard to look forward to the end anyway, as I still have 6 days off. Here's what's going on today so far -


- We did the morning bingo because they had the drawing for a free cruise after the second game and we had 30 tickets. OF course, we didn't have to buy the $109 worth of cards, but what the hell. Let me tell you, being on a cruise skews my sense of what's cheap and what's expensive. And after that, just let me say that I fucking hate bingo. After years of playing, I've won one $25 game. I was on for three numbers today, but of course I lost. However, Michelline's mother won a $280 jackpot. Needless to say, she'll have to find another way home. Bingo players are sore losers, since one person's win is everyone else's loss.

- I'm off to round 2 of beer tasting in about 30 minutes. Of course, I'll be posting a picture of the beers here as well as the trivia questions. Wish me luck!

Beer tasting round 2! You see the lineup above. This time, I'll give my impressions in order.

• Sam Adams Boston Lager - It's good, everyone knows that. The flavor has a depth you don't find in run of the mill american beers.
• McEwans IPA - I've had McEwan's Scotch Ale, but never the IPA. I generally don't like IPA's as I don't care for the overly hoppy bitterness, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It was not overly bitter at all. It was smooth with a nice mild flavor.
• Franziskaner hefe-Weisbier - The only heffenweizen in the group. This was very good, with a fruity taste in front that I couldn't quite identify. I was thinking banana, but that wasn't quite it.
• Celebrator double bock - This was my favorite of the bunch. Strong and full-bodied.
• Beamish Irish stout - Another canned beer with a nitrogen widget. Just like the Guinness and Boddington's from Monday, this seemed very weak and thin. I'd try it again from the tap, but I'm going to stay away from these cans.

This time I was smarter and made sure I had an empty stomach, so by the time we were finished, I had a nice little buzz (helped out by the Samuel Smiths nut brown ale I had right afterward). Ok, now for the trivia. For some reason he started off with three gimmes -

• What beer is called the king of beers?
• What do you use to keep the beer from sticking to the napkin?
• What's the larget brewery in the US?
• In what country is beer considered a food staple?
• How do you make a redeye?
• Give the city and year of the first American brewery.
• What vitamin complex does beer provide?
• What European beer uses a red star in it's marketing?
• What US state has the most breweries?
• What's the term for a collector of beer mats?
• What's the term for a collector of beer bottles?

Anniversary Cruise Day 5 - D-Day

It's the big day. As of today we've been married for 15 years. It's been great so far and I'm looking forward to 50 or 60 more. We'll be one of those couples in their 80's on their 37th cruise getting free champagne. A few thoughts from today -

- One thing new this cruise has been cell phone service onboard. The ship has a satellite relay for the major carriers. We noticed this after checking our phones and seeing several missed calls. If you don't have an international plan, you have to pay international roaming rates, so I'll just keep missing calls, I think.


- This was our first time in Grand Cayman and we liked it a lot. We were scheduled to do a tour, but we decided to skip that and just walk around the port area. We both thought it reminded us a lot of Key West. In that it seemed a lot more first world than third. Nobody following us around trying to sell us stuff, no crazy jerry-rigged wiring arrangements, no noticeable abject poverty. In Mexico, Central America and the Bahamas, you seem to see all these I've heard the Virgin Islands are more like this as well.

- This weak dollar may be good for exports, but it sucks ass for traveling. Pesos are about 10.5 to the dollar and the Cayman Islands dollar is .8 to the US dollar. I'll bet it was reversed 5 years ago.

Anniversary Cruise Day 4

Today was our first port, Cozumel. Nothing too exciting here. We wanted to shop for some Mexican art for the area in the backyard by the pool. You can also do tours to some Mayan ruins in the area, but that's a 7-hour deal, and we saw some neat Mayan ruins at Altun Ha in Belize in 2005. You can also do the beachy stuff, like snorkeling or swimming, but we're not beach people and besides, we could do that at home. Random stuff from today -



- Signs you're in a foreign country. As I was taking a picture of the mess of wires, a guy walked by and said he was an electrician. He said he saw some guys on a job down the street using garden hose for conduit.


- If you're ever in Cozumel, I recommend going to Pancho's backyard cafe. These fishbowl margaritas were good, and strong. After a light breakfast and one of these, I was feeling mighty happy.

- The crew had a talent show today and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. There were 5 or 6 acts, all singing. Everyone was really good, but a few stood out. One guy did a great rendition of U2's "With or Without You". Then a lady came out and they announced she would be singing something by Evanescence. Sure enough, it was "My Immortal". I was very wary because it would be so easy to butcher that song, but she was great, even with the Filipino accent.

- And I almost forgot, I actually exercised today! I stopped by the gym to see what it looked like and it's large and very well-appointed(I need to take a picture). Each machine has its own TV with a headset. Anyway, I generally run somewhere between 2.5 and 3 miles at 6.5 mph. I set it to 6.5 and I'm thinking this is way too slow. Then I notice it's set on kilometers per hour. I couldn't remember the exact conversion, so I bumped it up to 11 kph. You would think, though, that on a ship with 2200 Americans out of 2400 passengers, the equipment would be set to miles and pounds, no?

The Road

So, a while ago, I saw a post about this book over at Tart's blog, and made a note to myself to check it out sometime since I like reading post-apocalyptic type fiction. So I picked it up one day along with The Golden Compass, which I had to read after getting an email at work about how we should avoid the movie because it was going to turn our kids into little heathens or something. Anyway, I almost didn't get it when I saw it was an Oprah's Book Club book, but then I decided that was pretty closed minded. Anyway, I'm about a third of the way through it, and normally I wouldn't post anything until I'm done reading a book, but I might not even be able to finish this one. Not that it isn't good, because it is, but holy shit, it might be the most depressing thing I've ever read or even heard of. Maybe it wouldn't seem so bad if I didn't have a young son, but fuck this is really getting to me. And it's even worse because I can see what's coming. Well, I hope I can't, actually. Anyway, movies and books don't usually get to me too much, but if what I think might happen happens in this book, I'll probably cry like a little baby.

Oh, and I found nothing whatsoever that was controversial in any way in The Golden Compass.

Anniversary cruise - Day 3

It's day 3 of our anniversary cruise, and our second day on board. Today is a sea day as we cruise toward a Cozumel landing about 7 AM tomorrow. Right now we're heading west just a few miles north of Cuba. . Random thoughts from today -


- We played bingo this morning. Bingo is big on cruise ships, as is any and all forms of gambling. Anything to part us from our money. We bought the $69 package (heh, heh) which came with a sheet of paper cards, 12 raffle tickets, 20 pull-tab card and this electronic bingo machine loaded with 48 cards. This is what bingo has come to - you give them your money, the machine plays for you and it tells you lost, and you don't even have to listen to the numbers. We didn't win any bingo, but we did get $54 on the pull-tabs, so we nearly broke even and had some fun along the way.

- I'm connecting to the internet through the ship's satellite connection. Cruise ships are very slowly starting to realize that this internet thing is here to stay, and that hey, some people use the internet for leisure. I've been on 8 cruises and the advances have been painfully slow.

• First cruise 1998 - no internet
• 2000 through 2004 - A small area set up as an afterthought with 4 or 5 PCs called the internet cafe
• 2005 - Wireless arrives at the internet cafe! But only if you're actually in the cafe. And it's painfully slow
• 2007 - On the Jewel, the first advance since wireless - ethernet connections in every stateroom! And wireless in the public areas of the ship. Not bad. Of course, the internet cafe is still 6 PCs in a hallway and they have one guy who has to answer all the questions/complaints, and he's swamped.

Now that they've finally got the access nearly up to snuff, they really have to work on pricing and speed. I'm paying 0.40/minute to connect and to get that rate you have to drop $100 for 250 minutes. Needless to say, I'm composing this offline. And I swear the entire ship has one internet satellite. It's not dial-up, but it's definitely reminiscent. Fortunately, I'm somewhat savvy, so I've connected my laptop to the ethernet connection and set up a secured wireless adhoc connection with mine as the gateway. So for the same amount of minutes, we can have Michelline and her parents on too. Speed is about the same since the bottleneck isn't the 100mbps ethernet connection, it's the internet connection itself. Ok, I'm off to a beer tasting.


- I signed up for the beer tasting at the beer bar, Maltings. We had a little fun at the beginning when they dragged a very heavy, blind drunk guy off his barstool onto the floor. Eventually they brought a wheelchair and rolled him away. Luckily he wasn't belligerent. He was very pleasant but unhelpful as they were manhandling him into the chair. You can see the offerings above. I found both the Boddington's and Gunniess in the can to be quite bland. The Guinness didn't seem like the same thing I had gotten on tap. The lagers were ok. I'm really not much of a lager person. The Newcastle was the best, but I've always liked Newcastle. Along with the beer, they had trivia. There were 7 questions, but we only got three. Three teams got five right and they had a chug-off to name the winner. Damn, the winner drained a tall beer glass in about 4 seconds. Had to be about 20 oz. For your enjoyment, here are the questions -

• What's the oldest brewery in the US?
• What's the first foreign beer, an American brand, ever imported into Germany?
• What's the national beer of Jamaica?
• What country has the most varieties of beer (starts with a b)?
• What brand was the first light beer, in the 70's?
• How many years did prohibition last in the US?
• What's the strongest beer, ABV, sold in the us at 17%?
• What's the most expensive beer in the world and where does it come from?

The answers may not be accurate, but as the cruise guy said, it was his game. All-in-all, a lot of fun. I'm going to do it again on Thursday.


- This is something new on this cruise for us. These things are everywhere. They're automated hand sanitizer dispensers. The cruise lines have gotten a real black eye over all the cruise ships that have come down with Norwalk or some other stomach virus. I don't know how effective it is, but I've been using them. Better safe than sorry.

Anniversary cruise - Day 2

Embarkation day! Today we boarded the Norwegian Jewel, our third time on NCL. Also with us are Michelline's parents. We gave her mom a cruise for her 50th birthday last year, but this is the first time we could get it scheduled. Random stuff from today -

- After getting to the cruise terminal and boarding the ship, Pete, Michelline's stepfather, realized he didn't have his credit card. We decided to check the truck. This meant going upstream and getting off the ship. If you haven't been on a cruise before, the security is similar to an airport, but not quite so tight. And when the ship is boarding, everything is designed to get people onto the ship, not off. So we're crossing under ropes, cutting around barriers and we get to an unmarked, unmanned door leading out to the baggage area. We exit and are almost to the parking lot when a guy stops us and says we're not allowed to be there. He says we have to go back through the building. So we go back to the unmarked door which now, of course, is manned and locked. Fortunately, we were able to scoot past the security guard while he was confused. It turned out that Pete did, in fact, leave his card in the truck so all was well. On the way back in, we saw the baggage area guy. He said that we could have been arrested for being in that area. Maybe he was exaggerating, but what a shitty day that would have been.

- Norwegian does what they call freestyle cruising. This means that instead of having a set time and assigned table for dinner, which is customary, you just go when you want. We don't really like this - it's fun to go to dinner with the same people every night and have the same waiters. But this ship is designed for freestyle, so they have 10 specialty restaurants. Tonight we ate in their teppanyaki room. The food was good, but probably not worth the $20 cover. Tomorrow we're trying the Italian place, which has no cover.

- Guinness Stout is good beer, even at $4.50 a bottle. I got 6 for the price of 5 and I have 3 left. One of the problems with cruising is you want to eat like a pig, but you also want to get heavily buzzed (or wasted). You really have to work a schedule if you want to do both without getting sick. I had a liquid lunch which left me pleasantly glowing until dinner. I think I may go see what kind of buzz I can work up now that dinner has settled.

- Unless Michelline's downstairs winning right now, we're down $160 in the casino. If we win any big jackpots (like my $700 slot win 2 years ago), I'll be sure to let everyone know.

- Looks like it was a bad day for all the couch regulars except for nightshift. How do the Redskins and the Eagles beat the Cowboys and the Giants on the same day? And why is the station that just finished showing the Redskins-Giants showing Sportscenter from the UK? Anyone want the score of the Liverpool-Man United game?


- We have a balcony for the first time in our 8 cruises. So I'm wondering what kind of interesting stuff we can do out there without getting kicked off the ship :).

Anniversary Cruise - Day 1

We started off on our third vacation in the last 3 weeks today, this one being a cruise commemorating our 15th wedding anniversary, which is coming up on December 19. We're leaving tomorrow on the Norwegian Jewel for a 5-night cruise to Cozumel, where we've been twice before, and Grand Cayman, where we've never been. We decided to drive down to Miami today rather than getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. That way we get to start our vacation a day earlier, we don't have to rush, and we have a cushion just in case anything happens (flat tire, locking your keys in the car and waiting 2 hours for a fucking locksmith as the ship is filling up, no of course I've never done that). Some random things from day 1.

- Last year we finally got tired of the sluggishness and grainy quality of the pictures our Pentax Optio was taking, so we bought our first SLR, the Nikon D40. Now this is a great camera and it takes great pictures. In fact, many of you know that we had our original stolen in London this year and bought a second one as soon as we got back. The one drawback is the size. It's not the kind of camera you can strap on and forget about. We decided we needed a pocket-sized camera to get the shots when we didn't want to lug the Nikon around. After much research we decided on the Sony Cybershot DSCW55. Out of all the sub-$200 cameras we researched, this one got universally great reviews for features, price and picture quality. We went to Circuit City to get it and found this, the DSCW80 as an open-box special for $119 instead of the normal $199! The picture above was taken with our new camera.

- We went to the Bayside Marketplace to do a little shopping and eat dinner. It's in a great location, smack in the middle of Downtown Miami, on the bay, next to the Arena where the Heat play and in front of the Port of Miami. So we're looking for a place to park, it's $20 to park in the damn garage!, This is just for the privilege of shopping in the fine stores of Bayside, such as Brookstone, Claire's and FYE, among others. After aborting the approach to the garage with sticker shock, we find a sign pointing to self-metered parking. We get down there and find a spot and it's a $10 flat rate. It's pretty bad when you feel like $10 is a bargain to park at what's basically a mall.

- Driving in downtown Miami sucks. Leaving Bayside, I head back west toward 95, as we're the next exit north. I find the onramp, and see our exit is next, a left-exit, all the way across the road, blocked by a fucking cement median. So I head north and look for an exit where I can turn around. I get off on 112 West, which goes to the airport. This is good because our hotel is next to the airport. Well, it's not so good because you can't get back on 95 South from this goddamn exit. So we head west all the way down some scary-looking streets to 57 ave, only to find that the entire fucking airport lies between us and our hotel, and there's no going through. We head back east, and get back to the original 95N exit we started from. At this point tempers are flaring and I head West again, this time farther south of the airport. Finally, we get to our hotel, about 90 minutes after leaving Bayside. This should have been a 15-minute trip. And the shitty thing was, we knew exactly where we were in relation to the hotel the entire time, but the fucked-up streets in Miami wouldn't take us where we needed to go. And let's not even get started on the damn toll-roads that they spring on you just before the toll plaza.

- Overall, outside of a tense few minutes, we've had a very nice day. We'll be getting to the port tomorrow at around 11, and we should be setting sail about 4.

Carrie

So, I noticed this movie was OnDemand and realized that I hadn't ever seen it, so I thought I'd check it out. I have to say that I didn't really expect to see so much full frontal nudity in the first two minutes of the movie. And isn't there some kind of law against showing naked girls, even when they're of age, if they're portraying underage girls? Oh, and crap, if you add up all the pubic hair I've seen in movies and porn for the last 10 years or so, there's no way it even comes close to being as much as what even one of those girls had going on. Also, Sissy Spacek is horribly unattractive.

Yes, Everyone has rights!

In the car today I caught some of today's Talk of the Nation. The segment I heard was about the latest Supreme Court case concerning the rights of detainees in Guantanamo. I only heard about 5 minutes or so, but it was enough to make me start yelling at the radio.

This guy calls, and he's clearly got the winger talking points memorized. He says -

• Why are we worried about giving rights to people who would slash our throats in a heartbeat? Why worry about protecting people who aren't even Americans?
  
• Why are we wasting time arguing about the rights of criminals when we have other problems in this country?
  
• What about all the reams of vital intelligence we've got from Guantanamo?
  

A woman answered him, I assume it was Gitanjali Gutierrez, and she was far too nice to him. She took the approach of explaining that American citizens have been detained as enemy combatants and that whatever intelligence we might have gained from Guantanamo has come at far too high a price, and has cost us the ability to gather more meaningful intelligence in the region with the cooperation of people we have now alienated. She also mentioned that we already have a system in place to deal with criminals and we should use that system.

She was followed by David Rivkin an attorney and a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, who argues that the legal system is not appropriate for the detainees and that, in fact, if tried through the system, that most would go free. He claims that most of the detainees are Al Qaeda fighters.

Let's be clear about what's being said here -

• Non-citizens don't have inalienable rights. The only rights they have are those we deign to grant them.
  
• To win the war on terror, these guys are prepared to pick up and imprison innocent men along with the guilty. There is no other reasonable conclusion to draw if they're unwilling to grant them the right to challenge their detention and to force the government to meet a minimum burden of proof. So Rivkin is a lawyer and a member of a human rights commission who believes neither in basic human rights nor basic legal protections

One thing I find encouraging about the possibility of a Democrat in office, any Democrat, is that I think this system is going to change. If the nutjob Giuliani gets in, this will only get worse. Hearing the Democratic candidates talk about addressing the roots of the distrust of America by Muslims, restoring our image and restoring habeas corpus is so refreshing after 7 years of these idiots in power.