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Z End
This being the 26th of April, and Z being the 26th letter of the alphabet, I’ve come to ‘zee end’ of my letter themed posts. Or have I? I’m thinking I may run and oldie but a goodie that was letter based, and perhaps I’ll write a few letters as well. We’ll see. It’s been a fun month, and sometimes a challenge. The NaBloPoMo theme for May is “Voices”. That one isn’t grabbing my interest, so I’ll probably skip it. By the way, I used to think that Zebras were awesome and just pretty horses with stripes, but then I saw one nature video too many, and was witness to…
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Yaz – Only You
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yod7jc8U94[/youtube] The spring and summer of 1986 is when I discovered Yaz (known as Yazoo in the UK and on Youtube), and Upstairs at Eric’s and You and Me Both were in heavy rotation on my boom box. As a matter of fact, I may not have played anything else for weeks on end. Just to give you a picture, my car stereo was stolen from my rag top ’66 candy apple red WV bug, and since I could see myself offering up a series of car stereos to car stereo scumbag thieves, while driving a car that effectively didn’t lock (the rag top was held in place by snaps),…
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X Marks the Spot…
(image found here) Almost finished with my April NaBloPoMo letter theme…we’re nearing the end of the month, and the end of the alphabet. I was thinking about what I could write about with the letter X. Hmmm. There are possibilities, of course. There’s the X-Files, X Rays, X Games, Xylophones, Xenophobia, and the band, X. There’s the X Box, Generation X, and X-Mas. The possibilities are, well, not endless, but there are a few. But none that really float my boat, you know what I’m saying? So, instead of writing about a tv show or a concept or a disease or medication or instrument that starts with the letter X,…
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Welcome Back to California, Mom, and Happy Birthday!
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Virtue
I was thinking about virtue today, thinking about what I would consider real virtues, and those that are pushed upon us by society, and that what is virtuous depends greatly upon your culture. For example, in many cultures, it is considered virtuous to remain a virgin until you are married. I suspect this goes back to a man needing to know that the child he is rearing is his own, that he is carrying his own genes on into the next generation. This behavior can even be seen among animals. It is common for a male duck to kill all of a female’s ducklings before impregnating her with his own…
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Unaligned Films
Unaligned because they don’t have regular distribution…they’re independent. Ted got tickets to the California Independent Film Festival, which was held this weekend in Livermore. He got free tickets because he did the voice for the awards show, and the promo videos on their website as well. You know, the voice that comes on and says the name of the films in each category? Yeah, that was Ted. Cool, huh? Anyway, we spent Saturday watching Independent films that felt much more professional than that sounds. We started with a series of shorts, films that are about 15 – 20 minutes long. We saw 3 shorts, and they were all quite dark…
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TANSTAAFL
(picture found here) That stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”, and when I was growing up as a Libertarian in Fairbanks, Alaska, it was a term that I heard from time to time. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, ‘no such thing as a free lunch’, the concept is that you don’t get something for nothing. For everything you get in life, you give something up, and it’s important to make decisions wisely, and make sure that what you are receiving is worth what you are foregoing. I was reminded of TANSTAAFL the other day in the car, when I was listening to Forum…
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Spring Photos
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Running Out of Time
Running Out of Time is a novel written for young adults, by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Maya has been asking me to read this book for quite awhile now, and as I just finished Pictures of Hollis Woods, and was in the mood for another YA/quick read, I said yes, I would like to read it. Besides, the letter ‘R’ was coming up in my month of letters, so I had yet another impetus. I’m glad that she talked me into reading it, because I really enjoyed the book. The suspense was engrossing, and the characters very likable. Running Out of Time is the story of a young girl, Jessie, who…
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Quagmire
quagmire (plural quagmires) 1. A swampy, soggy area of ground. 2. (figuratively) A mixed up and troubled situation; a hopeless tangle; a predicament. The paperwork got lost in a quagmire of bureaucracy. The invasion of the country went smoothly, but the subsequent occupation became a quagmire. Growing up, I remember hearing how the war in Viet Nam was a quagmire, how leaving was bad, but staying would have been worse. How it was very much a situation to be avoided, and only a fool enters a war without a decent exit strategy. And yet, here we are again. Perhaps partially because the Chickenhawks in charge weren’t in Viet Nam, and…
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Pictures of Hollis Woods
Pictures of Hollis Woods is the story of Hollis, a 12-year-old girl stuck in the foster care system, wishing for a way out. She finds herself misbehaving, skipping school, doing whatever it takes, to get out of house after house, searching for more…searching for a family. She finds what might be a family for her in the Regans, a couple and their 13-year-old son, Steven. She lives with them for a summer, and starts to allow herself to open up her heart, to trust and to believe that she might be worth loving, that she might be worth more than a “mountain of trouble”, as one of her foster families…
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Poppies
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Perhaps it’s time for an update?
There’s an update on my mom, here. 🙂
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the perfect Omelette
Py and I had an amazing honeymoon, almost 15 years ago. We started in London, where we saw some plays and ate some bad food. We then spent a few days in Amsterdam, and went to the Anne Frank House, and ate yummy shwarma. Finally, we spent almost a whole week in Paris, in a hotel with rooms that looked like dungeons (not on purpose, just old buildings), and went to museums and ate wonderful yumminess. The best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life was at a little deli type shop around the corner from our dungeon. We had the best meal of our lives there, too. (When…
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Non-Fiction Five
Yay! The Non Fiction Five Challenge, hosted by Joy, is almost here. I’ve been looking forward to joining this challenge for awhile now, thought my reading seems to have stalled a bit lately, so I’m not sure how I’ll do. I’m a fiction reader by preference, and the number of non-fiction books that actually make it onto any reading list of mine are few and far between. What better way than a challenge to get me motivated and reading, right? Here are her rules, which are pretty basic: 1. Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May – September, 2008 2. Read at least one non-fiction book that is…