Saturday, July 10, 2004

Jaynee and I just got home a little while ago. We had a fun time and we’re both tired.

We both enjoyed The Boy From Oz very much, mostly because of Hugh Jackman - he is the show and is completely deserving of his Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical this year. He’s fantastic. There were some elements of the show that I didn’t like and there were a few yawner places, but when Jackman was on the stage (which was 95% of the time) he was just mesmerizing. And it wasn’t merely because he’s extremely good looking, although that didn’t hurt. It was that he was so into the character of Peter Allen and he owned the stage.

We agree, too, that the best parts were when he interacted with audience members. He did it early when some folks came in late to the show. He caught a lady as she was being seated and, while in character, teased her and had a little fun. When he learned that it was her birthday he has us all sing the Happy Birthday song to her. After the intermission, he did a similar thing with some other folks. He was naturally funny and great with them. With that couple, he actually had a stage hand bring out a Polaroid camera and took their picture, which he handed to them.

Also noteworthy were the ladies who played Judy Garland and Liza Minelli. The woman who played Garland was tiny and did a great job of mimicking Garland’s slightest hand movement. Her singing was spot on. The Liza chick nailed Liza’s way of speaking, but her singing was wholly her own style. Both were very good.

All in all, it was a very good show and if you have a chance to get to New York to see it, give it a try (if you can get tickets). Know that there’s some mild profanity and it’s got heavy gay themed scenes, but the musical numbers are the reason you’re going to see the show anyway.

I got here at about 3:30pm yesterday and no one was home, so I chilled out in the house until Denis got home. He then went to get CootieGirl and we played with her (and he cooked a fabulous dinner) until Jaynee got home from work.

Jaynee and I went to her worship band practice, which was interesting. They have less instrumentalists and more vocalists that our band. And they do their set of songs for several weeks in a row where we have different songs each week. We may repeat a song or two for a couple weeks in a row, but not the whole set. They had been into the practice for a while when the leader asked if I’d sing a special because the person that was supposed to sing this week backed out. Jaynee said I would, so I’m singing a solo at church tomorrow morning. Fortunately, there’s a simple little Vineyard song that I know pretty well that was in one of the music books. Jaynee will accompany me on the piano.

Child of God
by Kathryn Scott

With every breath, with every thought
From what is seen to the deepest part
I offer all that I’ve come to be
To know Your love fathering me

Father You’re all I need
My soul’s sufficiency
My strength when I am week
The love that carries me
your arms enfold me, till I am only
A child of God

With every step on this journey’s walk
And wisdom’s songs that the soul has sought
I give myself unreservedly
To know Your love fathering me

My niece is way too cute. It’s amazing how much she’s grown in the two months since I was up here babysitting in May. She’s toddling around pretty well now and very verbal, although I don’t speak CootieGirl yet, so I have no clue what her gibberish means.

OK, I need to get showered and dressed. Hope ya’ll have a great Saturday!

Friday, July 09, 2004

The results for week one are up. We had 7 players for the first week, but I have 11 on my mailing list, so if you haven’t signed up yet GET TO IT! Enough of us scored the big goose egg that you’re not that far behind. If you’re interested in joining, let me know in the comments and I’ll send you the info.

The standings:

tygertyger—100
chrissw—75
kdeweb—50
princessjami -- 25
SteenShell—0
jenspeaks—0
Jaynee—0

If you missed the first episode, CBS is repeating it on Saturday night at 8pm ET.

I’ll be driving to Cootieland today for the weekend. It’s shaping up to be a fun one.

I’ll go with Jaynee tonight for her church’s worship band practice (she plays the keyboard). I’m curious how they might be similar/difference from my church’s team. One difference is their facility - they use a local movie theater for their services so their access is significantly limited. We rent from an office building that has an auditorium attached - we have access to pretty much everything we rent anytime we want, which is very nice.

Tomorrow, Jaynee and I will head to The Big Apple for the day. First on the agenda is Ground Zero, which I haven’t been to yet. Then we’ll have lunch before we head to the theater on Broadway for the show (The Boy From Oz). I’m not sure what we’ll do Saturday night after we get home - crash probably.

Sunday will be church in the morning and chilling out at home for the day. I’m still hoping we can do poker with A&A regardless of the childcare for a small group at the house in the early evening. But if not, then A&A, know that I lova ya and I’ll see you in August?

Monday, I’ll be driving home.

Blogging will be light over the weekend. If you need something to read, check out some of the other blogs in my rolls at the right.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

So I know this guy who writes. And he’s written this book that hasn’t been published yet. But he’s got an agent who’s shopping it to publishers and I was patiently waiting for it to actually get published so I could buy a copy and maybe get it autographed and then read it. One day he mentioned that a publisher seems interested, so I told him I was excited and couldn’t wait to read it and the next thing I knew he was offering to send it to me now. Well, I’m not dumb, so I jumped on that offer and I’m about 30+ pages in and it’s great! I’m totally hooked and I thought about it all day and as soon as I post this, I’m going to sit down to read more.

But I’ve got a problem in that the raw manuscript is large and not bound, of course, so I’m reluctant to take it with me everywhere like I do with books. I’m going away for the weekend, but I have to leave the book behind and I’m very sad about that.

And I’m incredibly honored that this friend, who really doesn’t know me except through our blogs, felt that he could trust me with his unpublished work. Thanks, friend*. You have a gift and it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the reading world gets to share it too.

*I will be happy to link to you. I just didn’t want to seem like a teacher’s blogger’s pet with our mutual readers.

Would a couple of you post a comment on this post? For some reason I’m not getting my comments by email anymore. I turned off the feature for a minute then turned it back on, but since no one is commenting I don’t know if it’s working again. Thanks!

UPDATE: I’ve moved the post to the top of the page to keep the comments coming. I’m still working on it. Once it’s fixed, I’ll move the post back to it’s regularly scheduled position. Thanks for your patience and cooperation.

Move along now…

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear - President Bush won the 2000 election. Yes, Al Gore won the popular vote, but we don’t have a strict democracy, we have a democratic republic form of government. Therefore, the electoral college is put in play. George W. Bush won the electoral college.

Regarding the recounts in Florida that the US Supreme Court stopped? No, they did not “appoint” Bush as President. They stopped a procedure that they deemed to be illegal - that’s what they do. But back to the recounts. The mainstream media did an excellent job of burying the news that several news organizations continued the recounts, just to see what would have resulted. Turns out that they found that President Bush would have won Florida after all. (Please note to whom I link - it’s CNN, hardly a bastion of Republicanism in the media.)

Study reveals flaws in ballots, voter errors may have cost Gore victory

WASHINGTON (CNN)—A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

NORC dispatched an army of trained investigators to examine closely every rejected ballot in all 67 Florida counties, including handwritten and punch-card ballots. The NORC team of coders were able to examine about 99 percent of them, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators. In addition, the uncertainties of human judgment, combined with some counties’ inability to produce the same undervotes and overvotes that they saw last year, create a margin of error that makes the study instructive but not definitive in its findings.

As well as attempting to discern voter intent in ballots that might have been re-examined had the recount gone forward, the study also looked at the possible effect of poor ballot design, voter error and malfunctioning machines. That secondary analysis suggests that more Florida voters may have gone to the polls intending to vote for Democrat Al Gore but failed to cast a valid vote.

In releasing the report, the consortium said it is in no way trying to rewrite history or challenge the official result—that Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Rather it is simply trying to bring some additional clarity to one of the most confusing chapters in U.S. politics.

Additional Links: ABCNews.com
Florida Ballot Project
Slate

We have a crew of about 6 people in to do some training for our asset forfeiture group. I joined them in the conference room for lunch and we had a very congenial conversation going about mundane life things like laundry, pets, and yardwork. And then my boss turned up the volume on the television just as the local news channel started a segment about the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

Pretty quickly it became abundantly clear that I was the lone conservative in the room. Such derogatory comments were made about President Bush and the “stolen” election of 2000. Then they lit into Vice President Cheney’s intemperate words to Senator Leahy and what a bumbling idiot he’ll be in the debates with Edwards.

Right. Heh.

I packed up my stuff and left the room because the temptation to wade into those lefty waters was strong. I fear I would have been verbally slaughtered by the mob by sheer numbers.

Oh, and lunch for me today was leftover pasta with homemade Alfredo. Yes, I know that Alfredo doesn’t hold together when it’s leftover, but it still tastes good.

Um, I don’t think you want to mess with Michelle Malkin EVER. She takes Ted Rall to task quite viciously. Women pundits rule!

Color me skeptical, but my crap detector has been ringing incessantly since late last week - he was executed, no he wasn’t, and then he was released and found in Lebanon, but we still haven’t seen him and we’re only hearing this from his family? Please. So I wasn’t too surprised to learn that the FBI is investigating the possibility that USMC Cpl Hassoun was not actually kidnapped.

The U.S. Embassy said Thursday it has “credible information” that a missing U.S. Marine is in his native Lebanon, and the military said it was investigating the possibility his disappearance was a hoax.

There have been several contradictory reports about the fate of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun (search) since he went missing in Iraq more than two weeks ago.

[...]

Two FBI agents met with the Hassoun family in the United States for about 20 minutes Wednesday afternoon. The agents were not there to deliver any news to the family, but instead were sent to determine where the family was getting its information about Hassoun’s whereabouts, agent Kelly Kleinvachter said.

Have you ever bought the toy jewelry from those bubblegum-style machines in the foyers of stores? You’re being told to cease and desist and throw all of it away.

The federal government will announce a recall today of 150 million pieces of toy jewelry sold in hundreds of thousands of bubblegum-type vending machines because the trinkets can contain toxic lead that poses a danger to kids.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is implementing the voluntary recall, which was agreed to by four toy jewelry importers that supply 90 percent of all the gumball machine jewelry in the country. The CPSC is urging parents to go through their children’s jewelry boxes and junk drawers and throw out any toy jewelry they find.

[...]

The voluntary recall covers about 150 million rings, necklaces and bracelets in various styles and affects virtually all of the bubblegum machine jewelry in the United States…

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Via email from my Uncle Bill:

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the
Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire
building by George Bush. He answered by saying that,

“Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women
into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of
land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not
return.” It became very quiet in the room.

UPDATE (7/8 4:00pm): Jared did my work for me and verified that the spirit of this quote is true if not the exact wording.

Original question posed:

And would you not agree, as a very significant political figure in the United States, Colin, that America, at the present time, is in danger of relying too much upon the hard power and not enough upon building the trust from which the soft values, which of course all of our family life that actually at the bottom, when the bottom line is reached, is what makes human life valuable?

Powell’s more lengthy quote:

The United States believes strongly in what you call soft power, the value of democracy, the value of the free economic system, the value of making sure that each citizen is free and free to pursue their own God-given ambitions and to use the talents that they were given by God. And that is what we say to the rest of the world. That is why we participated in establishing a community of democracy within the Western Hemisphere. It’s why we participate in all of these great international organizations.

There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power — and here I think you’re referring to military power — then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can’t deal with.

I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.

So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.

(Applause.)

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

This got a hearty “Heh!” from me at lunch today when I saw in on TV.

When a reporter noted that Edwards was being described as “charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy” and then asked “How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?” the president immediately responded, “Dick Cheney (search) can be president. Next?”

Thanks for the reminder [via the llama butchers]

What makes me enjoy watching The Amazing Race all the more is the snarky recapping to be found at Television Without Pity. The recaplet from last night’s premiere ep.

Clearly, I’m More Intelligent Than You

Oh, Phil. How I missed you. The Best Reality Show Ever swings into gear with an episode that features, quite frankly, a lot of people who compete on a fairly even playing field, because they’re all sort of acting like dumb-asses. They fail to distinguish between leaving first and arriving first, they walk past giant red-and-yellow flags that are essentially brushing their elbows, they make remarks that are older and creakier than the doors on a 1971 Dodge Dart about women drivers, they arrive at the pit stop without doing all the tasks, and they look to a thoroughly baffled God to explain their incompetence and obnoxious behavior. Oh, and one of them comes pre-certified as a dumb-ass based on her appearance on an entirely different show. These people aren’t necessarily evil or any more unpleasant than past fields of racers, but so far? They suck at this. They’re going to have to get better, or they’re all going to be booted in a mass Philimination that will look like one of those Moonie weddings at Madison Square Garden. Of course, their ineptitude doesn’t change the fact that the show, as a show, is still funny, interesting, and filled with Phil. It’s still funny, it’s still smart, and it’s still engaging. There’s always tomorrow to work on racing skills.

UPDATE: Um, the TwoP TAR General Gabbery forum is entertaining as well.

I heart Jim. Next week? He rips his leg off and clubs the twins to death with it. as posted by JennEx.

For those who care, my soon-to-be-born nephew is newly scheduled to make his arrival on August 18th. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been nearly nine months already since Jaynee and Denis told us that he was coming. And yes, it’s a little soon after the arrival of CootieGirl - she will be 16 months old when her little brother makes his debut. We are hopeful that they’ll be good, close friends as they grow up together. And we’re very excited about the increase in our family.