'Fess-up time for today's April Fools prank

Just to be clear on some things...

1. There is no such thing as the U.S. Department of Public Health.

2. Reidsville does not have a deputy mayor.

3. Irving "Bud" Wombler is a fictitious character that I made up this morning.

4. Rockingham Regional Medical Center only exists in my mind, and will likely never be built in the Midway area.

5. Fritz Hippler was a real-life filmmaker who ran the Film Department of the Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels during the reign of Nazi Germany. I "borrowed" his name since this story needed someone likewise doing propaganda. And I'll admit that I liked the sound of the name. But other than that there was no other reason why I chose to use it, in case anyone's wondering.

6. The murals are not in any danger.

7. This whole thing was not meant to be a reflection at all on Reidsville mayor James Festerman, the mayors and city councils of the other towns in Rockingham County, or the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners.

8. The two comments on the post were my own creation.

9. The federal goverment is not offering Rockingham County $180 million.

10. Finally: no one is going to take tobacco away from Rockingham County.

But in spite of those facts, a lot of people seriously believed this year's April Fools gag that I posted early this morning! How many? Well, two reporters from long-established news outlets contacted me wanting to do stories about Rockingham County banning tobacco and how the federal government was asking for the murals to be destroyed. A number of e-mails came in and I received an outraged phone call this morning demanding to know more about the "ban". Mark Childrey made mention of it on tonight's edition of Star News (he admitted to me last year that my previous April Fools gag that had Lisa and me joining the Amish had really convinced him) and a few others have written in or otherwise told me in person that they had bought this year's gag also, to varying degrees.

So all in all, this year's April Fools joke was an unexpected success! I'm not as satisfied with it as the Amish one last year, 'cuz I literally waited months to unload that one and the idea for today's only hit me this morning and it was finished in fifteen minutes. But still, I can't deny that this one was a lot of fun :-)

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EXCLUSIVE: Rockingham County, per federal mandate, to ban ALL tobacco farming and products

EDIT 9:50 p.m. EST 04/01/2008: Click here for a MAJOR BREAKING UPDATE regarding this news story!

Details about this will soon be released to the press via regular channels, but here is what The Knight Shift has learned...

Rockingham County, North Carolina - the #1 tobacco-producing region in the entire country - will soon become the first 100% tobacco-free area in the United States.

What this means is: no smoking anywhere in public, no smoking in private homes, and no cultivation of tobacco on the many farms throughout the county.

It's part of a deal between county officials and the U.S. Department of Public Health. In exchange for "willingly" giving up tobacco, the federal government will disburse $120 million to assist Rockingham County's medical and preventative health infrastructure.

If all goes according to plan, there won't be a cigarette, cigar, pouch of chewing tobacco, or can of tobacco seed in sight by spring of 2009 anywhere in Rockingham County.

County officials reached late last night said that they felt they had little choice but to accept the deal. "Look Chris, Rockingham County needs all the help it can get right now," Reidsville deputy mayor Irving "Bud" Wombler told me via telephone. "I know it seems like we're going to be giving up a lot of our culture and our industry, but these are modern times and it's time we embrace that."

Wombler told me that in addition to shoring-up the county's health services, that part of the money would be used to establish a new state-of-the-art hospital in southern Rockingham County, which is seeing enormous population growth as people from Guilford, Forsyth and Alamance counties move to Rockingham to enjoy relatively lower property taxes. "We are considering land along U.S. 158 in the Midway area for the Rockingham Regional Medical Center," Wombler said. When I asked if this would be near what is locally known as the Cheap-Cheap Curb Market, Wombler could only give a curt "no comment" reply. When I notified him that $120 million would not come anywhere near close to covering both the full cost of a new hospital (the new county jail alone is expected to cost $40 million) and providing medical services, Wombler could only mumble something about "bond referendum".

Fritz Hippler, Municipal Relations Director with the U.S. Department of Public Health, returned my phone call late yesterday evening. He was polite, but he was also resolute in his department's policy: "Right now it's just a pilot program," Hippler told me, "but we are looking at expanding it to other cities and counties throughout America. The reason we approached Rockingham County, North Carolina first is that if it can be made to work here, it can be made to work anywhere."

At this point I asked him about whether there had been any consideration about personal liberty in this. Hippler told me: "It's the belief of the current administration that the American people should and are willing to give up a little liberty for a little security. Isn't being able to go into a smoke-free town worth all the money that it will be getting from the federal government to improve health and well-being in that city?"

Hippler further suggested that more money would be sent to Rockingham County if it took steps to "cleanse" its tobacco-centered culture. "It is my understanding that City Hall in Reidsville has a mural depicting tobacco farming," Hippler told me. "We would grant the City of Reidsville additional funds if it paints over it and removes that image from public display." When I informed Hippler that there is also a very large mural on Scales Street that depicts rows of tobacco being farmed, he told me that "of course that would have to be removed also, if Reidsville wanted the additional funds."

Wombler told me that Reidsville mayor James Festerman would be appearing in a joint press conference along with the mayors of Eden, Stoneville, Madison, Mayodan, as well as the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners before the end of the week to discuss the deal and how Rockingham County will make "the transition to a completely tobacco-free society". As part of the grace period, Wombler told me that the federal government would be sending coupons to eligible residents of Rockingham County that will be redeemable for free nicotine patches and "nicotine chewing gum".

I'm going to stay on top of this story, folks, and report anything else that I find. In my opinion this is going to be a disaster for Rockingham County: I'm not a smoker, but I'm no fool and this is going to destroy this area's economy like nothing ever has before. What the hell are these people thinking?!

Stay tuned.

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More classic SESAME STREET: "Four People Fooled!"

It's been awhile since I've posted some vintage Sesame Street clips. Here's a short one, but it's ranks up there as one of the all-time greats: Ernie and a little blue "Anything Muppet" in "Four People Fooled!"

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So today's my birthday...

How old am I? Heh-heh, well, I'm not quite halfway to 70. Not yet anyway.

But it's funny: in the past two weeks I have been mistaken for a college kid twice and a high school student once! Lord only knows how much longer that will last.

I wrote here last year about why I don't like having a birthday, and it has nothing to do with "getting older" at all. That's still something that time hasn't fully shaken off of me. For some people, birthdays are already a reminder of one's mortality and to have one like that is harsh enough to rock you for a lifetime. So I still don't care very much for birthdays.

But as Lisa told me this morning: "It beats the alternative, doesn’t it?"

Suddenly, it didn't seem so bad :-) Gotta love having a wife like that.

Lots of people my age and even much younger – I know of a few who had this happen to them in their teens - already start to feel what some people call "middle-age crisis". That's something that I never understood, and as I've gotten older I still don't understand it. I guess it has to do with how I grew up.

Yeah, I had people my own age to associate with. But I was also very blessed to have considerably older people in my life too. And not once did I think of them as "old" or "middle-age" or even my contemporaries as "young". I still don't. They were and are just "people".

Just as I've honestly never understood the whole thing about race or differences of religion. I grew up surrounded by white people, black people, people of various other stripes and creeds. Focusing on "the young" or "the whites" or "the Methodists" was something that never became instilled in me. We were all just one big bright and wonderful tapestry, and I was going to have to find out on my own where I belonged in that. More than thirty years on I'm still trying to find out, but I digress...

And even the ones that were chronologically more mature than I was, they were never bothered by age at all. These were people who had done remarkable things with their lives and were still doing remarkable things. I'll never forget the day that "Mr. Henry" as we called him, 70-some years old, taught me the art of dowsing. That's the arcane technique of detecting subterranean water sources while walking around on the ground above. I was eight years old at the time. There we were out in a field with his dowsing rods and some branches that he had found that were suitable for the purpose. In today's worldview we would be termed "a pre-adolescent and an elderly man" together, but I never saw it that way and I don't think Mr. Henry did either. The difference in our ages didn't matter to us. I never saw it figuring into anything then and I still don't see age difference figuring into anything today. Later that afternoon I started teaching my Dad what Mr. Henry had taught me. And it didn't occur to me until years later that it must have looked strange for someone as small as I was to be demonstrating dowsing to his father.

Ya see how much more fun life can be when you don't worry about things you can't control?

And don't give me that crap about "being too old" to enjoy some things, either. One of my friends has a boyfriend and both of them, and his parents all play World of Warcraft together. Aside from the two lovebirds, everyone else is 50 or more. That doesn't stop them from going around slaying orcs, or whatever they do in World of Warcraft.

And hey, one of the gnarliest Myspace pages that I've ever seen belongs to my 72-year old aunt. She designed it herself. Her page looks better than mine! She's cool as all get out :-)

"Ageism", "fear of aging" and everything that comes with it, there's no doubt that it comes from our culture. But ever wonder about why that is? It occurred to me a few months ago: American society has become too engineered toward allocating resources for material comfort rather than unleashing personal liberty.

That was without a doubt the worst thing that resulted from Social Security and the rest of the New Deal: that it imposed, by force of government, a definition on the quality of life, instead of letting individuals choose to define that quality for themselves, as it should be.

Think about it: most people in this country work and slave most of their lives to save up for their retirement. And it doesn't leave them time or passion to do anything else with their life! If we didn't have this damned Social Security and everything else that comes with socialized spending and "womb to the tomb" government involvement, the quality of life for everyone across the board would skyrocket. I’m not talking about "comfort" here, either. Government cannot guarantee a comfortable existence, and it's foolish to look to it for that to begin with. What I'm talking about is having the freedom to make of your life what you want to make of it, instead of just being a cog in the machine.

There is the cause of yer so-called "mid-life crisis" right there: realizing what you only think is too late that that your time on this Earth has been for you to be a slave to altruism, with nothing left for yourself.

But it's never too late. And I don't care how old you are, or even if you are one of my worst enemies (and you know who you are). You can always turn around, and go a different way. And start finding your own purpose in this world, whatever it is that God has for you.

My all-time favorite musical is Children of Eden. Elon's drama department did a production of it almost ten years ago when I was a student there. It's one of only two musicals that I own the soundtrack CD from. The final song of the show is "In The Beginning". Part of it goes like this...

Our hands can choose to drop the knife
Our hearts can choose to stop the hating
For ev'ry moment of our life
Is the beginning...

There is no journey gone so far
So far we cannot stop and change direction
No doom is written in the stars

It's in our hands...

We cannot know what will occur
Just make the journey worth the taking
And pray we're wiser than we were
In the beginning
It's the beginning
Now we begin...

Every moment of our life is the beginning, of something wonderful. It's in our hands.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is: there is no young life, or old life, or even "middle" life. There may be younger or older, but those are just relative terms, and not even empirical values.

There is no bad life, or even a good life.

There is just life.

And it is for you to make of it what you will, however or wherever you are on the journey. So long as you have breath in your lungs, you always have a choice as to what to do with it.

I should already be dead, more times than I care to count. It was a miracle that I even made it out of the hospital after I was born. By age 20 I had skirted fate way more than necessary. By 30 I seriously wondered why was I still alive or even sane (if that can ever be said :-). I've been shot at, poisoned, almost blown to smithereens, nearly decapitated, and some stuff that I still haven't a clue how to begin to relate on this blog.

Considering that past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future returns, I'll be very very fortunate if I'm not pushing daisies by 40.

But you know what? If I die by then or thirty years from now or whenever, it’ll be okay. 'Cuz I'm just trying to make the most of my time now, as best that I can. I try to live each day for God first. That means, as the quote at the top of the page by C.S. Lewis says, I have to "die" to myself so that Christ within me can live that much more. I only wish that I had really understood that much earlier, because it is the fullest life that I have ever known.

Besides, it's much harder to worry about getting older when you've no idea if you're even going to live to see tomorrow. That's a lot more fun that it sounds! :-)

A friend put it to me best a few months ago: "People like us were never young to begin with. Why should we worry about getting old?" Indeed.

But as another friend told me a few days ago: "How can you ever grow old when you don’t stop growing up?" Which echoes the epitaph for Arthur C. Clarke: "He never grew up and did not stop growing." I like that one too, an awful lot.

So the things on my plate that I'm going to try to do in this next year: finish a book (that's already well-underway), make another movie (maybe more than one), build up my business, be the treasurer for a friend's political campaign... and, Lord willing, become a father. If I can have just that last one, everything else will be right with my world :-)

In the meantime, I'm off to enjoy my birthday. I think that Lisa might be getting me Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360...

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Michael Giacchino talks about release of "Roar!" overture from CLOVERFIELD

Not long after Cloverfield came out in January (read my review here) this blog received word from a reliable source (and still a reliable one in spite of things) that Michael Giacchino's "Roar!", the one bit of original music score for that movie, was going to be release "soon". Obviously this did not happen and we are still waiting for it.

Well today Ain't It Cool News is pointing everyone to a video at Film Score Monthly Online wherein Giacchino addresses the high demand for "Roar!" and the problems that have come with it. Nobody foresaw that a single piece of music like this would become so sought-after, Giacchino says. He also adds that the complete track is 13 minutes long and that when (not "if" but "when") "Roar!" comes out it will be the full piece.

So sounds like it's coming after all, just that they've had some legal stuff to sort through first. My bet is we'll see it on iTunes around the same time that Cloverfield comes out on DVD in a few weeks.

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New Facebook group: "I'm NOT Voting For ANY Candidate Who Runs A Negative Ad!"

This morning I started a new group on Facebook. It's called: "I'm NOT Voting For ANY Candidate Who Runs A Negative Ad!"

It's exactly what it sounds like: a group for people who are sick and tired of negative campaign commercials from political candidates.

The genesis for it came this morning, as I watched a seemingly non-stop torrent of commercials from this state's gubernatorial candidates. I can't recall any of the ads having anything upbeat and substantive to say about the candidates running them. They were all aimed toward tearing-down "the other guy".

That's when I decided that I wasn't going to vote for anyone in North Carolina's governor's race. Unless there's a candidate who hasn't run any negative ads. And even then, I'd have to seriously study him or her before I could give my support. But if they've run a single negative commercial, that's an automatic disqualification. By doing that they've only shown that they're more interested in the power that comes with the office than in using the office to serve others.

So I'm now vowing not to give my vote to any candidate who tries to destroy his or her opposition with negative ads and "dirty tricks". Which will severely limit who I can vote for. But I don't care. The line has to be drawn somewhere and this is it.

That's what this Facebook group is all about. It's for those who are likewise frustrated with the politics of personal destruction. It is not a partisan group. I'm not interested in one party or any other getting elected, and this group isn't meant to be a vehicle for that at all. It's just to promote honesty, integrity, and competence among our elected officials.

So if you're on Facebook and this sounds good to you too, you're invited to join the group. Oh yeah, it needs a good logo: something that really conveys the essence of our frustration with the way things are. If anyone has one that you'd like to have considered for use on it, shoot it over this way via e-mail!

EDIT 11:00 a.m. EST: I just whipped-up a graphic for it. It's on the group's page now, but if anyone else has a better idea, go ahead and submit it :-)

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Eat your heart out Bobby Flay!

This pic of Richard Moore's grandson Jack is way too cute to not share with others...

On Richard's site, that pic links to the website for My Home Kitchen, hosted by Richard's wife Debbie and broadcast locally on WGSR Star 39. Check it out for recipes for some good eats!

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Johnny Robertson of the Church Of Christ In Name Only still doesn't get it

Although to be fair, a lot of other Christians don't get it either...

(Yes, I admit that I'm watching Robertson's show tonight on WGSR, 'cuz more than a few people suggested that after the video I posted in response to last week's show, that he might use it tonight. So far I haven't seen it.)

Mr. Robertson, God does not care which "church" we belong to! God is not interested one bit whether we are "Church of Christ" (I'm going to start calling the bunch that broadcasts on WGSR Star 39 as "Church Of Christ In Name Only" or "COCINO" for short to differentiate it from the real Church of Christ, the independent congregations sincerely trying to serve God that most people have heard of) or Baptist or Pentecostal or Catholic or Methodist, or any other denomination...

God does care about whether or not we are seeking for Him, whether we honestly want Him. And that seeking for God is not dependent upon which doctrine we follow or how strenuously we adhere to it.

As I said in my original post, we are saved by the grace of God. And I haven't heard Robertson touch on that at all.

And God doesn't give a flip about what we wear to church either. If things were the way Robertson was claiming tonight, nobody would get into Heaven! What Robertson was arguing is, in effect, "conditional repentance".

There's another wrong aspect of what Robertson said about one's attire in church: it's as if the church building itself is imbued with some kind of power. More shades of Gnosticism there, as was mentioned in the earlier post.

Talk about hypocrisy: Robertson spent a good part of his show tonight condemning some churches for buying expensive buildings. When he and his bunch spend several thousands of dollars a month to broadcast... well, hatred toward other Christians. Robertson even publicly offered $1,000 last summer to anyone who could meet his challenge on something or other (I forget the exact details at the moment).

One last thing: Johnny Robertson, if you are reading this...

Miracles still happen.

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Regardless of who won, we were all "Witness" ...

... And it'll be a long time before the Jayhawks can forget how much they had to fight for this one.

Congrats to the Wildcats of Davidson College for their awesome run in this year's NCAA Basketball Tournament!

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Fair warning to any other "soul winners" who come to my door

Before you even think of knocking, please know this ...

- "King James Version-Onlyism" is not only bullcrap, it is a doctrine bordering on heresy. I'm not talking about using the King James Version as a personal preference. I use it myself a lot of times. And no doubt always will. But to suggest that I'm a "lost sinner" because my main preference is the New International Version or some other translation is a lie from the pit.

- If you are doing this for your church or your pastor, you've already messed up. You're supposed to be doing it for Christ.

- Yes, I have a "home church". It is a real home church, in every sense of the term. If you believe that a "church" must have a building and a pastor, then you don't understand what church is to begin with. And it's not my problem if you can't comprehend that.

- If you don't even know why you are asking me "Are you saved?" then don't waste your time asking at all. Because I've been around the block enough to know that practically every time I get asked that, it's from someone who doesn't give a flying rat's butt about me or my salvation at all. They just want to know if I'm "of the same mindset" as they are and more to the point they want enjoy having a smug sense of superiority.

- If I tell you a story about Thomas Aquinas, it's only because I want you to think about it and if you understand the gist of it, then I hope you'll take it to heart.

- It's hard for me or anyone else to tell you that we're going to Heaven if it's too obvious that you are not sure if you are going to Heaven to begin with.

- I'm not interested in building up "your church". And I don't want to be bothered by people who are trying to grow a church either. I would much rather be visited by people who are sincerely interested in building the Kingdom of God.

- If you tell me that your church is "fundamentalist", keep on walking. Because you do not want me as a member.

- Understand that you are paying a visit to an irreligious follower of Christ, who is not interested in "religion" at all.

- I can spot the people who are witnessing for the sincerely right reasons a mile away. If that ain't you and you come here with the wrong motive, I will know.

- Realize that you are dealing with a guy who is fed-up with how a lot of Christianity is "playing games" and "putting on a show" more for our own sake than for God's.

Sorry I have to do this folks, but after what happened yesterday here, I'm compelled to post a notice to anyone else who may come a'knockin'. I'm thinking of making a sign of it for my front door too.

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Popcorn Sutton out of jail, for now

Marvin Sutton, known far and wide throughout the country (and the world?) as Popcorn Sutton, has been released from jail after posting $20,000 bond, two weeks after a raid by federal revenuers on his moonshine operation in east Tennessee.

I'm assuming that Popcorn has a second home or some other accommodations in Tennessee, because in addition to the bond he also cannot leave the state until at least a hearing next month ... that could send him to jail once more. He also must wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, submit to drug testing (and cannot imbibe of his or anyone else's "likker"), and agree to have his property searched at any time by federal agents.

I'll say again: Popcorn made a bad move by running a still across state lines in Tennessee, when if he had stayed home in Maggie Valley he could have remained in business. The man should have known better. But all the same: it doesn't look like the federal government has anything better to do than harass a legitimate American folk hero, and someone who is keeping alive some of the proudest traditions of Appalachia. It's funny: our government won't do anything serious about millions of illegal invaders, but it does have the will and resources to pursue a regular citizen who's just minding his own business and not hurting anyone else.

More details about the Popcorn Sutton Saga will be posted as they develop ...

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Google fumbling around in the dark with silly "awareness" campaign

If you go to Google today this is what you'll see ...

Google, which for various reasons is a company I otherwise have lots of respect for, has blackened its page for "Earth Hour" today. According to the material at the link ...

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

So by asking everyone to turn out the lights for an hour, this event's organizers believe that this will accomplish something meaningful?

Ha!

This whole thing is a stunt. As is everything motivated by "awareness" pretty much. A year from now it will barely be remembered at all. I do believe in being responsible with the environment, as wise stewards and custodians over it. And I certainly believe that mankind's activity over the past two hundred years has had an effect on the Earth: how could it not?

That said, Earth Hour is still just another one of those "flashes in the pan" intended to let people feel good about themselves and delude them into thinking that they just did something that "really matters" when in fact they haven't done anything at all. And I hate that kind of thing. Along with so much else it distracts us from taking hold of our own lives, and belittles us into thinking we have to "join the group" in order to make the most of our time on Earth. And we get so pressed to "help the cause" that we don't stop to look at who is leading this movement or to where, exactly.

I've watched this sort of nonsense ever since Earth Day in 1990. Enough to say with utter conviction that darn nearly all of the "environmental movement" is driven by politics and not about sincere concern for the Earth at all. And that's why I refuse to have anything to do with radical environmentalism: it is an inherently corrupt movement that creates more problems than it solves.

Besides, as I wrote on this blog more than 3 years ago, humanity can not destroy the Earth. It is absolutely beyond our technology.

In the meantime, I wish Google would go back to their white scheme: some people are complaining already about the pitch-black look.

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"The Surge" fails: U.S. uses air support as it takes sides in Iraqi civil war

In case I haven't articulated it already: I think that people who support George W. Bush's "Surge" in Iraq are, for the most part, idiots.

So for the past year and more we've been hearing "The Surge is working! The Surge is working!" I'm reminded of how some passengers on the Titanic actually believed beyond all rational thought that the ship was coming back up to the surface just before it took its final plunge into the Atlantic.

Those who believe in "The Surge" (sounds like a Michael Bay movie) don't care about the reality of what's going on in Iraq. If they did, they might be outraged to know that whatever success "The Surge" has boasted doesn't come from an increased U.S. military presence nearly as much as the fact that the U.S. government has been BRIBING Sunni militants to "switch sides" and not shoot at American forces.

Some of us knew it was only a matter of time before this mercenary operation failed. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

So in case you haven't heard already, Iraq in the past few days finally began collapsing into full-blown civil war. And the United States government is becoming actively involved on the side of the Iraqi government that it installed. Which is something that no sane leaders ever do with another country's civil war. Bush was a fool to step in and Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was a fool to have accepted the aid, if Bush even offered it. Because if there's one thing that history has proven about civil wars, it's that outside interference always turns a bad situation into something far nastier. It will come back to bite us in the rear sooner or later.

But here's the thing about American involvement in the Iraq civil war: the U.S. is using air strikes against the Shia militias. This is pretty much equivalent to an official statement by the Bush Administration that "We admit that the Surge has not worked at all." Calling in air strikes is a very clumsy, ham-handed way to deal with a ground-based rebel force. For the faction using air support like this, it basically means that you don't care to broadcast wide and clear to your enemies that your own ground-based forces aren't up to snuff and can't win.

So George W. Bush has not only given many Iraqis who had so far been "on the fence" a damned good reason to take up arms against American personnel, he has also let it be known that "The Surge" has failed, and that the capabilities of United States military - the mightiest armed force in the history of the world - are now significantly diminished.

This past week might finally prove to be the point where it can be said that the Iraq War, at last, was the worst foreign policy fiasco of the previous quarter-century, if not longer. Because nothing has been gained, and everything conceivable has been lost because of it: innocent life, countless resources, and now the last shreds of respect for both American diplomacy and military prowess.

I don't know if we'll ever recover from this mess. Maybe we don't deserve to.

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Popcorn Sutton gets a musical tribute

Earlier this week this blog reported the arrest of Popcorn Sutton: perhaps the very last of the original Appalachian moonshiners and an American living legend. As of this writing Popcorn is still in jail in east Tennessee after a raid that caught him with almost a thousand gallons of still-brewed booze and many hundreds of pounds of unfinished mash.

Since his arrest, Popcorn Sutton is gradually gaining support for his cause. I've heard that a legal defense fund has been established, and I'm trying to find out more details about that. Someone is even selling "Free Popcorn" shirts on CafePress. And now a couple of musicians have done a short song in honor of Popcorn. Enjoy!

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How much is that doggie in the Wii-ndow?

For Christmas I got Lisa a Nintendo Wii. Had to camp out all night during cold rain in front of a GameStop store the week before to get it (this was when they had the vouchers thing going, and I wound up getting a Wii for Lisa and a Wii voucher for my sister, who got hers a little over a week after Christmas ... am I a great husband/brother or what? :-)

Along with the Wii I bought a card worth 2000 Wii Points, to spend on extra games or whatever through Nintendo's online store for the Wii. And until now we hadn't used it at all (guess we've been having too much fun with everything else on the Wii). So yesterday I loaded up the points and "went shopping", and even though it cost 500 points I thought it would be neat to have the Internet Channel installed. This is a version of the Opera browser customized for the Wii, that lets you surf the web (kinda like WebTV).

The Internet Channel for Wii is pretty neat. The first thing I went to was this blog (of course!) and then Lisa's and a few friends' sites. Then I went to Flickr. Why? Because I wanted to see if there were any new pictures of a certain girl...

A year ago I discovered Taci, an unbelievably cute cocker spaniel whose owner Kalen loves to take pictures of her and post on Flickr. Taci looks almost exactly like Bridget, our cocker spaniel who sadly passed away way too young some years ago. Kalen is quite a talented photographer and she's captured Taci in so many sweet (and often funny) poses and expressions. The pic above is one of the latest that Kalen has taken of Taci. So I zoomed-in with the Wii Remote and took this photo of Taci's face on a 37-inch high-definition television set via the Wii! Kalen thought it was hilarious (and hopefully so did Taci :-).

By the way, that might be the last photo that I post on this blog of our high-def TV: the one that I've been referring to as "The Behemoth" ever since we got it a little over a year ago. You can't see it in this photo but there's something wrong with the screen that looks like it's been a manufacturing defect (that's not a reflection on the company that made it by any means, these things just happen every so often). We tried to get it fixed but it's not really feasible, so next week the retailer is giving us another high-def television, one that might be even better. Thank goodness we got the service plan for this thing. But still, I've grown quite fond of The Behemoth. So before it went away I wanted to post a photo of it displaying something beautiful for a change, as opposed to, say, Gears of War :-P

And if you want to see more of "Taci the Wonder Spaniel", scamper over to this link!

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Darvaz: "The Door to Hell"

That's one helluva carbon footprint ...

Near the small town of Darvaz in Uzbekistan is a place that the locals call "The Door to Hell". Thirty-five years ago some geologists were drilling for natural gas there and hit upon a cavern. Poisonous gas was detected down in the hole, so the excavators ignited it in the hopes that it would "burn off" and clear out the air so that they could explore further.

It's been burning ever since, non-stop, for more than three decades.

Mash down here for more photos and one scary video clip of "The Door to Hell".

EDIT 2:28 pm 03/30/2008: Someone noted in the comments that Darvaz is actually located in Turkmenistan, not Uzbekistan. So I stand corrected. But in my own defense, I just took the original website at its word that this was Uzbekistan :-)

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Read George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR online for free

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 as it's more commonly written), the all-time classic novel about totalitarianism and the destruction of privacy, is now available for free reading on the web... and legally, too!

I read this book during the spring break of my senior year of high school. In many ways, Nineteen Eighty-Four broke the ground for much of the foundation of my personal philosophy and beliefs. And it's probably a safe assumption that to most people who've read the book, mentioning it brings to mind Big Brother, or the Thought Police, or Room 101. Certainly the telescreens of the book can now be seen as greatly prescient, considering how our own government is now fully capable of spying on regular American citizens without a warrant or any real oversight (I'll leave it as an exercise for any readers as to whether this government is actually doing it, but have you ever known of a government given power and then choosing not to use that power?).

But to me, the scariest concept of Nineteen Eighty-Four was always Newspeak and Doublethink. Because each day we see Newspeak all around us. Most people don't even care that it's there at all, they have become so inured to it. In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell shared the brilliant observation that without adequate language to share ideas, those ideas and thoughts were rendered utterly impotent... right to the point that over time, it would become impossible for a person to even be capable of the thought at all. Hence, the Party's systematic destruction of language as a measure of controlling the people. Most often this was done by cramming many disparate thoughts beneath the umbrella of generic terminology.

Now think about how many - some would even say "most" - Americans are intellectually incapable of thinking about this country's politics beyond the entrenched two-party system. Very many Americans only think that they are capable of deep meditations about this nation's politics... when in fact their thoughts have already been dictated by language and those who control it: the leadership of the two parties, with the eager assistance of a corporate press.

Don't even get me started on Doublethink. I've had a long day and don't feel like trying to educate some people for whom it would be lost in a cloud of cognitive dissonance.

But I must ask: how is what America is turning into not like the Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Read the book, if you haven't already, and judge for yourself.

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