We got the "Trash" made and munched on that, but instead of the pilot episode for Lost we watched the latest movie to come through Netflix: Christmas With The Kranks, with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. And a whole lotta other notable faces: Dan Akroyd, M. Emmet Walsh, Tom Poston (I'd wondered how he's been doing and it was great seeing him again, he plays the priest), Cheech Marin, Jake Busey (who's looking more like his dad with each new film he's in), bunch more. This may surprise a lot of people but this movie is based on the novel Skipping Christmas written by John Grisham (yes the king of the lawyer stories). Allen and Curtis play a couple who won't be celebrating Christmas this year with their daughter because she's out of the country with the Peace Corps, so the Mr. Krank gets the idea (and signs his reluctant wife on eventually) of not having Christmas at all and instead spending the money on a cruise that leaves Christmas day. Which you'd think would be easy enough, and then their neighbors and co-workers start giving them all kinds of hell about it. It's a darned funny movie and a clean one too, with a pretty upbeat message at the end. Well worth watching even if we have just left the holiday season.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Saturday, January 14, 2006
We call it "Trash"... what do YOU call it?
Today has been the windiest day in recent memory that I can remember. Enough so that for the most part we stayed in, out of the wind chill. Had plenty to do though: the website I've been building is finished and went online a few hours ago, and my client seemed pretty impressed by the finished product when he came by this afternoon. In the meantime there was taking down the final bit of Christmas (the tree is bare, I pack it up tomorrow) and playing videogames. We thought of going out tonight (I'm itching to get to Toys R Us and use this gift card that Lisa got me, hoping they'll have the new LEGO Star Wars Slave I set) but instead opted to stay inside and watch the pilot episode of Lost from my new DVD set, which I actually watched a few nights ago but Lisa thought it looked interesting so she wants to check it out from the beginning too.
But right now Lisa is engaged in, I guess you could say she is beginning a ritual that she'll probably be doing the rest of her life. I first did it two years ago and now it's her turn to pick up the tradition. She's in the kitchen right now making a batch of Trash. She did her first one a few days ago and for a first-timer she did pretty good.
What's "Trash"? I don't know if that's the regional name for it, but that's what my Mom and her family and most other people I've known around here call it. It's called that because "there's all kinds of junk in it". I've heard that different parts of the country have other names for it but I've no idea what those names are: if you call it something else, send me a note about it.
So what's this "Trash" stuff? That's our name for Chex Party Mix. You know, that scrumptious melange of Chex cereal, nuts, pretzels, Worcestershire sauce and other seasonings that there just can't seem to be enough of around the holiday season. We always have enough raw materials to make a few batches into February. And Lord help us, we gotta have 'em. Mom makes this stuff like crazy around Christmas and it's always the first thing to go: she gave us a few containers of it this past month, what little there was that Dad didn't eat! Only difference between the stuff we've been making and the original recipe is that we've never used bagel chips, but that's okay. Lisa's got a fresh batch in the oven right now... and it smells delicious!
So that's our plan for tonight: watching Lost and eating Trash. As good a thing to do on a wintery Saturday night as any :-)
Friday, January 13, 2006
Iran and Venezuela: How they threaten American stability
Am taking a break right now, while finishing up a client's website. And while perusing through the news I found this article at the Washington Times (disclaimer: they ain't my favorite news source) about Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He's proposing starting-up a "Bank of the South" that would provide loans to countries in South America, as a direct competitor to the U.S.-directed International Monetary Fund.
Herein is the real reason why Chavez is so thoroughly despised by many among America's political and financial leaders, and it has nothing at all to do with Chavez's leftist inclinations: Chavez is moving the lower half of the Western Hemisphere out of Washington's control. Bear in mind that several countries south of us have become financially depleted over the past few decades: obviously from corrupt leadership but plenty of it has to do with these countries being in perpetual hoc to foreign interests. That Argentina's government took out such outrageously large loans so recklessly is inexcusable: for that alone, the people of that country and others should have had their "leaders" strung up from the nearest telephone pole by their circular reproductive units with piano wire. But the IMF should never have granted the loans to begin with. IMF's behavior in all of this has been like a bartender who keeps the beer coming even though the customer's obviously had too much to drink. They should have known that there'd be nothing but trouble coming out of this, absolutely must have been aware of what kind of characters they were trusting this money with, but they kept sending the dough down south anyway. The ineptitude of these countries's leaders guaranteed that there was no way the loans could be reasonably repaid: it became loansharking on a grand scale. And over time this is how a lot of countries in South America came to be controlled - however indirectly - by governments thousands of miles away.
So now with Argentina's debt paid off, Venezuelan president Chavez is actively taking steps to make sure that U.S.-led interests won't be financially dominating his region any longer. Say what you will of Chavez: between this, and financing a new South American news network to compete with U.S. media, he is fostering a kind of independence for South America that hasn't really been known in modern times. And this time there's no cut in it for the politicians in Washington and their financial backers. No wonder Pat Robertson wants to kill the guy: Chavez is going to cut off a reliable influx of money toward his neighbors north of the equator.
But whatever Venezuela is doing right now is nothing compared to the threat posed to the United States by Iran... and it has nothing to do with possible nuclear weapons. That's just a pretext tossed out to the American people to distract them from the real reason why the warhawks are now trying to drum up support for an attack on Iran.
For the longest time now, the global oil trade has been done with the U.S. dollar. And that's about all that's really propping up the dollar right now: American money has become such a fiat currency that without the circulation of dollars through oil commodities, there is scarce little reason for other countries to keep using the dollar for much of anything. It's scary, but true: American financial stability is dependent upon the value of the dollar as the sole unit of exchange on the oil market. If another currency starts getting used, it will devalue our dollar significantly. And so far nothing has threatened - or been allowed to threaten - our hold on that.
But now Iran is positioning itself to finally break the U.S. grip on petro-currency.
This coming March, Iran will start up its oil bourse. For the first time oil trading will not be done in dollars, but with another currency: the euro. Remember not so long ago when the European Union was first getting the euro started, and how almost worthless it was? Under Iran's plan, other countries will begin paying for oil on its bourse in euros, drastically increasing that currency's value. The U.S. dollar meanwhile - either incrementally or almost immediately - will be dumped as the de facto unit of exchange... and will certainly suffer an incomparable loss in value. If you think inflation is bad now, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...
Does anyone really think that in the face of this kind of financial threat, that the holders of power in the United States won't try something to stop Iran from going through with its bourse? Call me overly-suspicious, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it turned out that one of the - if not the - real reasons we invaded Iraq three years ago was because Saddam Hussein had moved the trade of Iraq's oil off the dollar and onto the euro. Iraqi oil was again being bought with the U.S. dollar just a few months after we took over the place. If Iraq was deemed to be even that much a threat to western financial stability - to whatever a degree it was - what is going to happen when Iran attempts the same thing... only far bolder in design?
If this were all a game of chess, it would seem so classic: the king is caught between the knight of the south and the rook of the east. The pawns and pieces are almost exhausted. And there is very little that the United States can do at this point to stay out of checkmate. Between the growing financial independence of Latin America and the possible undercutting of its monetary value by a mid-east enemy nation, the United States faces a severe failure of its economic and foreign policies almost entirely across the board.
The thing of it is, America didn't have to have been caught in a pincer like this. But we've traded away so much of our industry to other countries, and left so little for ourselves... what else is there left, but to practically expect that our "leaders" will lash out in vain desperation?
This is the kind of thing that I think about, when I'm not working on something else.
Okay, break's over. Time to get back to designing that website.
Is Lost's "black smoke" the new Rover?
This week's episode of Lost has a lot of people talking, what with Mr. Eko's backstory and all. The "black smoke" is getting plenty of attention too. Here's a screen-cap of Eko staring it down, courtesy of lost.cubit.net:
I'll admit to still being a relative newcomer to Lost, and I haven't kept up with the discussion boards but it turns out that my theory that the black smoke is a nano-machine cloud has been suggested already. Well, the guy running The Regularly Scheduled TV Show Blog has a great theory about what "Lostzilla" might actually be...
"I think Lostzilla isn't a killing machine but more of a machine to keep them on the island. Thus, it killed the pilot after he let them know there was no hope in waiting to get off the island, and didn't kill Locke or Eko since they've surrendered themselves to living on the island."Do you know what this means if this turns out to be true? It means that the creators of Lost are getting some of their ideas from the 1970's TV show The Prisoner... in which case they're gonna really start screwing around with our heads. Lookahere...
I can see the final episode of Lost now: Hurley's holding Locke captive down in the hatch and screaming "Who is Number One?!", before ripping Locke's face clean off only to reveal that it's a mask and beneath it... a gorilla. All while the Beatle's "All You Need Is Love" is playing in the background.
Good theory about the black cloud. I like it a lot :-)
TheKnightShift.com gets used... FINALLY!
It only took a little over five years, but at last I'm making use of my theknightshift.com domain name. When I first registered it in October of 2000 I was doing my reporter gig in Asheville, with no website at all to put it on but I thought it sounded too clever to not be the guy owning it. So I swiped it up. And it's been just sitting there all this time, periodically renewed but otherwise not doing a darned thing whatsoever. Think the first people I told about it to were Geoff Gentry and my old discipleship partner, during lunch at Sandy's Subs in Elon one day after church. They thought that was a neat name and Lisa's been telling me all this time that I needed to do something with it. Well finally after one wedding, four moves, eight jobs (two of 'em at one time), two Star Wars movies, a whole lotta nonsense and no kids (yet) later, TheKnightShift.com becomes something I can proudly boast about!
Using it forwards you to this blog, so you can remember www.theknightshift.com (or just theknightshift.com) instead of theknightshift.blogspot.com, but the blog is physically still sitting on Blogger's server. Maybe someday I'll move the entire blog to my own dedicated server and stick my domain onto it, but for now I'm perfectly happy to still use Blogger, and use theknightshift.com as a convenient pointer for everyone I know (and don't know yet). And I might use this on my own commercial services website eventually... but for now feel free to use it to come here :-)
EDIT: Special thanks to Kim in Technical Support at Register.com for helping me fix a problem with the domain forwarding. 'Preciate it a lot Kim!
The Doctor is coming to America! Sci-Fi Channel to run new Who
He's back... and it's about time!! Get it? Ahhh nevermind...
The Sci-Fi Channel is going to start running the new Doctor Who, it was announced earlier today. Up 'til now the only way those of us on this side of the Atlantic have been able to watch the Doctor's new adventures has been to download episodes via file torrent. This past Christmas day there was an awesome Christmas special - the first episode to feature David Tennant as the new Doctor - that was especially fun to behold. Those of us who've been going through the hassle of downloading know only too well that the uninitiated are about to discover something very special come March, when Sci-Fi starts running the episodes: you've no idea what "manic" means until you see Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. There is some serious action, heartbreak, and humor headed this way: can't wait to see what the reaction will be like to the "Bad Wolf" episode featuring the "Anne Droid". The only downside to all this is that the release of last season's DVD set, originally slated for next month, is getting pushed back to June. But that's a minor price to pay for finally getting Doctor Who imported over here. Thank you BBC and Sci-Fi Channel!
Thursday, January 12, 2006
No fun in Smallville political stakes
For the first time since we've been married, Lisa and I aren't watching a new episode of Smallville together tonight. We liked the "Lex-Mas" episode that ran in December very much, but 20 minutes into this new one and it's about nothing but that RIDICULOUS "state senate race" storyline, which has been a snore-bore since the night Tom Wopat guest-starred to ask Jonathan Kent to run for the office. Lisa's now playing a game on my Nintendo DS and I'm sitting at the computer posting a rant.
Nothing about this election plotline has been the least bit believable. I mean really: just what kind of pull does the Kansas state senate have that would entice Lex Luthor to run for the job? Why the heck is Lionel Luthor involved in this anyway? Why are both sides pouring insane amounts of money into their campaigns? They showed Kent's campaign headquarters earlier in this episode. Back in '94 I worked part-time next door to the headquarters of a closely-watched U.S. House campaign, and that was practically a hole in the wall that you wouldn't even know was there if you'd walked past it: It was nowhere near as swanky as what Jonathan Kent has for his state election run. From everything I've heard of it, there's going to be some assassination attempts going on in this race too. So I ask again: how does a state senate seat possibly rate this kind of outlandish attention? Is the Kansas legislature considering a ban on Kryptonite or something?
C'mon guys, this ain't no fun. There's been some good stuff this season, like Aquaman and Brainiac. Can't we see more of that instead of political shenanigans that defy every stretch of belief?
Trying out a new way to blog
This is the first post I’m making to my blog via the Blogger for Word plugin for Microsoft Word. If you’re running Windows XP or 2000 and have Word 2000 or newer, you can install the plugin and compose your stuff in Word, then publish directly to your blog! So this is really a test to see how well it works. This is going to come in handy for the occasional longer article that I write.
The Internet: Broken?
"Weird" Ed sends along the following article from Technology Review: one of the Internet's initial architects now believes that "the Internet is broken". It should be completely re-worked from the ground-up, argues David D. Clark. At the present time the 'net is rife with security flaws and an inability to readily adapt to newer technologies. Interesting read, to say the least.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Tonight's Lost, and a theory about that "black thing"
So earlier today I aired some speculation about tonight's new episode of Lost...
"My theory is that Eko is some kind of Christian mystic, like Emanuel Swedenborg (that may be stretching it though)."Boy, did I ever get that one wrong.
So... is that the "monster" that we saw Eko stare down?
Only one thing pops into mind as to what that black cloud might be: go read Prey by Michael Crichton. And try to convince yourself that the black cloud-creature on the island doesn't seem an awful lot like the nanomachines that Crichton wrote about.
Very good episode tonight. And a pretty shocking backstory for Eko. A show like this makes me wish I had a DVR to go back and watch it all over again. Ahh well, maybe next Christmas :-)
"Echo? Eko!" New episode of Lost airs tonight
I didn't realize until a little while ago that tonight brings us the first Lost episode since November. The last time we looked in on the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors, Adebisi from HBO's Oz was down in the hatch recounting Hebrew history while giving Locke a new portion of the "orientation" film, before the episode ended with Michael getting AOL instant messages from his kid.
Okay, so he's not really playing Adebisi anymore, but word is that tonight is when we get the episode focusing on Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's character Eko. We're supposed to find out a lot more about him... maybe even the reason for his 40 days of silence and why he's carrying that big stick around. My theory is that Eko is some kind of Christian mystic, like Emanuel Swedenborg (that may be stretching it though). I mean 40 days is the period of testing and purification in the Bible, so it makes sense that there's some religious significance at play here. I'll be watching it tonight... and maybe this weekend I can finally start watching that Lost Season 1 DVD set that I got for Christmas!
Beverage of astronauts brews homemade booze
Last night I got Chad on the horn to congratulate him on his "going the distance" at the Walt Disney World Marathon this past weekend. It's the first time he's done a full marathon after a few years worth of training and running half-marathons, so he's definitely in Chariots of Fire mode right now. I'm seriously considering starting a training regimen and joining him sometime.
Chad told me that the day before the race on Saturday, he and some friends visited the Kennedy Space Center. And on a dare he asked one of the tour guides "do the astronauts still drink Tang?" The kid replied that they still bring Tang along on spaceflights. I haven't seen Tang advertised in maybe ten years or so (if it still is) and we were wondering if they even still made it for public consumption anymore: I can't even remember the last time I saw it in a grocery store. Do today's kids even know what this stuff is? I mean back in the day there were so many commercials for Tang, a lot of 'em having to do with how REAL astronauts REALLY drank it in orbit! Those ads quickly vanished after the Challenger disaster though, but I digress...
So after we hung up I did some quick research. Sure enough, Tang is still being sold in stores. But it might be a regionally-distributed thing these days, hence why we've never seem to see it around here anymore. I remember the thing about how supposedly Tang could be put in dishwashers to clean dirty dishes...
...But did you know that you can brew an alcoholic beverage with Tang? I didn't either until I saw instructions posted at "Blog on the rocks" showing you how to take Tang powdered drink mix, yeast, and water along with a few other materials (like a sturdy bottle) and in a few hours time make the Tang ferment into "Tangpagne". The taste of which is said to be "quite nice". I'm not the drinking type, but for some reason I'm inclined to attempt this bit of kitchen chemistry sometime. If so I'll report back here on what it's like. Maybe after that I'll gather up some hops and barley and make my own beer too :-)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Bush sez: Disagree with me and you're a traitor
So now President Bush is suggesting that those who believe this war is wrong are bringing "comfort to our adversaries". Among those he's now practically branding as traitors are those "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil or because of Israel or because we misled the American people".
Well, can it be said with any credulity whatsoever that Bush was honest about how he pitched this war to the American people?
That question will sail past most Bush supporters. You know the ones I'm talking about: the ones who get that glazed look in their eyes whenever you speak nothing but the truth about what Bush is doing, as if you don't know what you're talking about. They're the ones who aren't "taking the red pill" if you know what I mean: living in a fantasy world that they don't want to wake up from. They're the ones who will nod their heads and agree with what Bush is saying now, and will tell you that you are betraying your country and your President by believing that this war has been based on falsehoods from the very beginning.
But I prefer what another - and far greater - President had to say about Americans and their right to dissent:
"Dear God, please send us another great man like Teddy Roosevelt to take the place of the imposters that your adversary has raised up.""The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.
"Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1912
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.Peretti and Dekker enter House of horror
Chaplain Gentry - a really good fella through and through - notes on his blog that Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker are conspiring together on a new book... which is enough to give you pause if you know anything about either of these guys. Peretti is still best known for his book This Present Darkness, first published in 1986... can't believe it's been that long. Dekker rose to fame in the past couple of years with his "Circle Trilogy", of which I've only tried reading the first book Black and that went WAY over my head: think The Matrix meets The Chronicle of Narnia... but I'm gonna pick it up again soon. These two masters of the supernatural thriller are coming out with House later this spring. The plot of it sounds like, I told Geoff, "that movie Saw as conceived by Ned Flanders". It seems pretty interesting, and I have enough faith in both these writers that I may have to pick up a copy when it comes out.
Giving the blog a new look
It being a new year, I'm feeling like a lot of changes are in order, including this blog. I've made a few cosmetic alterations already (the font is not so "white" which I didn't notice 'til yesterday could have stood to be more easily read), including the sidebar: a little leaner and things juggled around somewhat. This blog is very much like myself: a continual work in progress, and its only natural that how it looks will reflect that. I'll be changing a few other things in the days to come, including new graphics etc.
Albert Hoffman turns 100 tomorrow
In 1938 he was a chemist at a Swiss pharmaceutical firm, where he began experimenting with the ergot fungus. His work led to the discovery of several useful drugs, but none of those would go on to have the impact as did the curious compound that was #25, which he called "lysergic acid diethylamide". Although the chemical had no apparent medicinal use, it would become very well noted for its consciousness-altering effects.
Dr. Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD, celebrates his 100th birthday tomorrow. In honor of all the wonderful good that LSD has given humanity, I propose that sometime tomororow we all listen to William Shatner's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Monday, January 09, 2006
Want to WATCH Monday Night Live?
So... want to finally see what this Monday Night Live thing is that I've been raving about for awhile now is all about? Media mogul and maverick mastermind Richard Moore has pulled off a technological coup and started streaming Star 39's television feed over the 'net, and it looks pretty darned good! Moore's Political Soup runs every Wednesday at 6 p.m. EST and if you want to check out Monday Night Live it airs tonight (and every Monday night) at 9 p.m. EST.Click here to start watching some of the most offbeat television anywhere!
(you might need to use Internet Explorer and the latest version of Windows Media Player)
