McCain Has the Lead

I wanted to go ahead and get out in front of the major networks on this...

...The Sweasy.net editorial staff would like to project that Kentucky and its eight electoral votes have been won by...

...wait for it...

...Republican John McCain! Since no other states have yet been tallied, that gives McCain the lead at this point, 8 electoral votes to zero. At this point he is absolutely TROUNCING Democratic rival Barack Obama.

How can the Sweasy.net editorial staff call an election that hasn't even happened yet? It's easy: Both parties already have!

The Democratic party, in fact, has already given the state to McCain and isn't even really trying to win the state. As I mentioned a month or so ago, I regularly receive emails from the Obama campaign, a direct result of the money I donated to the campaign back in the spring. Last week I received an email from the Obama campaign, and this is what it said:

Dear Bryan, You're receiving this message for two reasons. First, Election Day is just 45 days away. That's not a lot of time. Second, you live right near a state that is once again a crucial general election battleground -- Ohio. And Obama supporters from across the region are essential to putting us over the top in the Buckeye State. That's why we're recruiting volunteers to come to Ohio -- for a weekend, for a week, or even for a commitment to help change this country by organizing in Ohio all the way through Election Day.

The campaign isn't asking me to help Obama win Kentucky. It's asking me to go help him win in Ohio. They have conceded Kentucky already.

So if you live in Kentucky, unless you're planning to drive through Indiana or Ohio, I wouldn't worry about putting a bumper sticker for either candidate on your car. It's not going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things. Neither will a sign in your yard. It won't matter if McCain wins Kentucky 52% to 48% or 63% to 37%. It's all the same in the end.

Darned electoral college!

More on My Eclectic Musical Tastes

Earlier I wrote about my (supposedly) eclectic musical tastes. Thought I'd share with you a song I heard on the radio Friday that absolutely BLEW ME AWAY!

It's a cover of a song called "Hey Ya" which was originally done by a hip hop band called Outkast. I really didn't have an opinion one way or other about the original song, but this version is fantastic! It completely changes the feel of the song. I'd actually never listened to the lyrics of the song before--I'd just thought of it as a funky dance song. But the lyrics (at least the first 1/2 of the song) are really a painful lamet about a relationship that's falling apart, and this new version matches the words with the music.

Click to see and hear it.

P.S. Here's the original if you don't know it and you're curious. And by the way, I actually have a new respect for the original song as a result of hearing the new version. 'Cause when I go back and look at the lyrics I see what a subversive song it really is. The song, as I mentioned above, begins with this painful lament (though it sounds like a typical dance song), but then the singer sings "Ya'll don't want me here. You just want to dance," and then it turns into a traditional dance song at that point. It's very clever.

Washington D.C. Photos

I took some of the 450 photos (no exaggeration) that Lisa and Meredith took in D.C. and posted them to a web album. I'd tell you more about them, but since I wasn't there I don't have a whole lot to say.

You can view the album by clicking here.

I Was Wrong

Okay, NOW I'll admit that I was wrong a couple of weeks ago when I predicted that the nomination of Sarah Palin would be the turning point of the Presidential race.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

It doesn't matter if Sarah Palin makes some MAJOR screw-up in her first press conference, or if it comes out that she once had an affair with a grizzly bear she had been hunting. Palin's nomination isn't going to be the turning point.

The financial meltdown of the last two weeks IS going to be the turning point. I think McCain is going to begin a long fade in the polls, and by election day it will be clear that Obama is going to win--I think he'll have a double digit lead. Only a colossal screw up by Obama will prevent it.

And it's sad, too, 'cause like I've said many times before, I have a lot of respect for John McCain, but he took a major gamble this week when he tried to call off the debate and then tried--by the sheer force of his presence--to broker a deal on the financial crisis. He lost that gamble and it's going to be almost impossible for him to recover.

Speaking of the financial crisis, it's scary as heck out there. I'm not an expert on finance, but I've always been interested in it. Okay, not always. About 13 years ago I got very interested in it and in about 9 months read 8 books on the subject, starting with Money for Dummies and then Investing for Dummies and then Bonds for Dummies and then I got off of the dummy books and started reading more technical stuff. I'm no expert, like I said, but I found the world of finance MUCH more interesting than I ever thought I would, mostly because of the theoretical stuff about how economies work.

Because of that interest in the theory of economics, I've found the last few weeks and months very interesting. Two Mondays ago, after the (almost) hurricane blew through our fine town, I called Lisa from work. Of course, she was worried about the power being out, and I was worried about the damage that had been caused at work, but I also told her, "We may be missing the bigger story here, though. I just read that Lehman Brothers AND Merrill Lynch both tanked this morning. In a week the storm is going to be gone, but this financial thing is a big, BIG story, maybe the biggest story of the year!"

Thirteen years ago when I first started investing and first started reading about investing, the stock market was returning 30 and 40 percent a year, and there were bozos writing books which predicted that this rate would continue forever!

When I received my quarterly newsletters from Vanguard, though, they were always filled with warnings. About the year 2000, I remember one of the newsletters beginning with "Things are getting scary out there." And the point of the newsletter was that historically stocks earned 10% a year, and that theoretically they pretty much always would. If stocks earned 15% a year for five years, you could expect them to earn only 5% a year the next five years. It's not a perfect science, any more than predicting the weather, but over the long haul it always worked out. And with stocks earning 40% year after year after year, a tsunami of trouble was heading over the horizon!

I never bought into the Dow 36,000 prophets. I believed the doomsday people.

Again, though, I'm not an expert on the economy. I foolishly believed that the period from September 11, 2001 until 2006 or so was that down period I was waiting for. It didn't matter that it wasn't as steep as I was expecting and hadn't lasted as long as the rise had lasted. I thought that was the end of the problems and we'd be in for a period of growth now.

Again, as with my Sarah Palin prediction, I was wrong.

Very wrong.

And here's the really sad thing about the economy: This is pretty much EXACTLY what happened to Japan in the 1990's. We've been marching down the same path just a decade and a half behind, and we've been powerless to stop it.

Again, like I said (and like Vanguard said before me), it's getting scary out there. I'm SERIOUSLY considering taking a couple hundred dollars out of the bank and keeping it at home. If the whole system quickly collapses then my debit card might stop working, and I'd like to be able to get some groceries.

I don't think it will get that far, and I'm only CONSIDERING doing that, but I am considering it.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you should do the same. I've been wrong about all that other stuff.

Jesus Was a Democrat (part two)

Now that I've established why I began this whole line of
thinking, today I'd like to begin to explain why I think that Jesus,
if he were forced to choose a political party to side with,
would choose liberalism over conservatism.

This seems contrary to what most people would say about
Christians in general. About six months ago I read a
non-fiction book entitled UnChristian, which presented in detail the results of a survey designed to determine what young people (those
under 30) believed about Christianity and--as the subtitle
of the book stated--why that matters. When asked to describe
a typical Christian, this is what those people said, with
the most popular responses first:

1. Anti-homosexual (91% of respondents)
   
2. Judgmental (87%)
   
3. Hypocritical (85%)
   
4. The same as every other religion (82%)
   
5. Good values and principles (76%)
   
6. Politically conservative (75%)

It was an interesting book, and it got me to me thinking again about the idea that I had mentioned in my previous entry on this subject, the idea that Jesus was a liberal. This led me to create a
list of what I saw as the differences between conservatives
and liberals. Here's what I came up with:

Conservatism: Interested in preserving the status quo
Liberalism: Seeks to change the current status quo

Conservatism: Desires a free market system where individuals have the right and opportunity to accumulate wealth
Liberalism: Desires a more socialistic system where the government ensures that all citizens have their basic needs met

Conservatism: Favors traditional values over individual freedoms
Liberalism: Favors individual freedoms over traditional values

Conservatism: Abortion--Anti-choice / Pro-life
Liberalism: Abortion--Pro-choice/ Anti-life

Conservatism: Anti-homosexual
Liberalism: Accepting of homosexuals

(There are more differences than these, I know, and my list had them, but I can already sense that this is going to be a long entry, so I'll leave it at that.)

I then started asking myself, which of these ideologies sounds more like Jesus' teaching, and what evidence from the Bible to I have to demonstrate that. Here's what I discovered:

Conservatism: Interested in preserving the status quo
Liberalism: Seeks to change the current status quo

You could actually make an argument for both of these stances. After all, Jesus said in Mathew 5:17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." That sounds like someone trying to preserve the status quo.

However, a closer reading of that chapter reveals that Jesus is actually criticizing the way the Law was being interpreted by the scribes of the day. Jesus states that the scribes say that one shouldn't murder, but Jesus carries it a step further, arguing that it's not enough to avoid murder--simply THINKING ill will toward another is a sin. Thus, Jesus was definitely challenging the status quo.

Judgement: In this case, Jesus was...a liberal!

Conservatism: Desires a free market system where individuals have the right and opportunity to accumulate wealth.
Liberalism: Desires a more socialistic system where the government ensures that all citizens have their basic needs met.

This one is a no brainer. Jesus was never interested in accumulating wealth. In three of the four gospels he encourages a rich young man to "Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." Jesus models a kind of socialism when he feeds the multitudes. He collects the bread and fish and miraculously converts it into enough to feed the thousands who had come to listen to him. If he'd been a Republican he would have fought for the young boy's rights to hold onto the fish he'd worked so hard to catch and the bread he'd bought with his own earnings.

Also, a reading of the Acts of the Apostles reveals that the early apostles lived a life that was almost identical to a 1960's commune.

Judgement: In this case, Jesus was...a liberal!

Conservatism: Favors traditional values over individual freedoms
Liberalism: Favors individual freedoms over traditional values

Again, I would say this is a no brainer, but this time the decision falls to the opposite side. Jesus was very much in favor of traditional values. Heck, Jesus was the literal embodiment of the traditional values given to the Jews by his Father. And Jesus was never very much concerned about individual freedoms.

Judgement: In this case, Jesus was...a conservative!

Conservatism: Abortion--Anti-choice / Pro-life
Liberalism: Abortion--Pro-choice/ Anti-life

I don't think there's any doubt that Jesus would have been against abortion. He plainly stated that murder was wrong, and he was fond of children and chided people to be especially careful not to harm them. If Jesus had been a politician, it's impossible to imagine that he would have bought into the idea that a woman's right to choose superseded a child's right to live.

Judgement: In this case, Jesus was...a conservative!

Conservatism: Anti-homosexual
Liberalism: Accepting of homosexuals

This one's tough. The Bible itself condemns homosexuality in a number of places (Paul was especially adamant about it in his letters). Jesus himself, however, was silent on homosexuality. Sure, you could interpret the "pearls before swines" line as being about homosexuality, but that's a stretch.

Jesus DID speak out against sexual immorality, but his comments were directed at humans of both the hetero and homo-sexual inclinations. He says that divorce is wrong, that all lust is a sin. He is an equal opportunity condemner of sexual sin.

Despite that, though, one of the most famous scenes from the Gospel involves the only evidence of sexual sin in the Gospels. A woman is brought before Jesus for adultery. The priests want Jesus to condemn her and stone her to death, but Jesus says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Jesus seems to clearly be stating that no one is in a position of righteousness that would allow that person to judge another's sin and that we should have compassion for one another.

Judgement: Split Decision

So if you tally that up, that's two for liberals, two for conservatives, and a no decision.

So what does that mean? I'll talk more about that NEXT time. This isn't really a great place to stop, but a) it's late and b) this is a VERY long blog entry. I'm actually surprised you're still reading it. Truth be told, I wouldn't still be reading if this were YOUR blog! But that's the difference between you and me. You're a better person.

A Reprieve?

I'm not an end times millenialist ultraconservative Revelation-reading apocalypse-expecting person by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to admit that even I've been a little bit worried about the possibility of all life in the universe ending as a result of the experiments that CERN was planning to do with its Large Hadron Collider. That's why I found myself a little bit relieved to find that major experiments with the collider have been put on hold until spring. I was really looking forward to this Christmas!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the Large Hadron Collider is--in simple terms--the world's largest (and most expensive) science fair project, created by the world's smartest (and best financed) science geeks. It's an 8 billion dollar tunnel (That's right, "billion" with a "b") that runs underground in France and Switzerland. All told the tunnel is about 17 miles in circumference.

The scientists plan to collide two beams of protons into one another in an attempt to simulate the Big Bang. Yes, THAT Big Bang. Luckily for us, a defect has forced the experiment to be put on hold until the spring of next year.

As I said, I'm not one who easily panics. I went to bed on December 31 of 1999 confident that the world would still exist the next day, despite worries of Y2K, and I just smirk at people who tell me that this event or that is proof that we are living in the "End Times."

Maybe what makes this end of the world scenario a little scarier for me is that I understand it so little. The Y2K scare probably didn't bother me because I knew enough about computers, had helped the district technicians install Y2K "fixes" on software at the high school, that I understood what the problem was and how it had been fixed. And I see Revelation as a non-literal book, a vision, meant to give hope to first century Christians, and not as a literal book describing what's really going to happen on the last day of the planet's existence, so I don't put a lot of stock in dire Apocalyptic prophecies.

But particle physics? I'm sorry, but my brain just doesn't get it. I can handle atoms and protons and electrons and neutrons, but my brain just sort of melts down after that. I remember watching an episode of Nova a few years ago hosted by theoretical physicist Brian Greene and entitled "The Elegant Universe." The show tried to make quantum physics easy to understand. It dummied it down so much, in fact, that at times the episode seemed condescending. Despite that oversimplified explanation (or maybe because of that) I still found myself unable to really grasp the concepts. My brain just couldn't hold the ideas (And it wasn't Greene's presentation, either, that was holding me back. I remember having the same problem 13 years ago when I read a book called The Physics of Star Trek, which attempted to use Star Trek as a medium for teaching theoretical physics. Couldn't get it then, either).

So the old saying is that what we are afraid of what we don't understand. I guess I'm living proof. I don't really know what a micro-black hole is, but I'm pretty sure I don't want it to be the end of me.

Cell Phone Pictures

I was just cleaning out the memory on my smart phone and I found these pictures. None of them are great and none of them are of a good enough quality for me to keep them, but I thought I'd share them really quickly before deleting. Most are from this summer. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.
The picture of the girls smelling flowers and making a peace sign was taken on June 30 when the whole family went to the zoo. This photo was taken just after we arrived.

During that visit to the zoo we went into the Insect House. The insect house has a new ant exhibit. If you've been to the Cincinnati Zoo before, you may remember that there has always been an ant exhibit inside the Insect House, but now they've created a second habitat that's about 50 feet away from the first habitat, and they've connected the two with plastic tubes. The ant colony is in one habitat and their food is now being placed in another so that visitors can watch the little guys have to trek their food all the way home through the tunnels. It's actually very interesting albeit cruel. At the food side of the display is this throne where children can pretend to be the "ant queen."

That night (and all that week actually) Natalie had soccer camp. I snapped this picture of her playing goalie. She's the one with her legs spread (not standard defensive posture, I don't think).

I already posted one shot of Natalie helping me mulch the flower beds during conVENTion week. Here's another shot.

One day during the ConVENTion, when Lisa was busy working and Meredith was in Frankfort, Natalie and I went to the Newport Aquarium and then walked across the river on the Purple People Bridge. I snapped this photo about 1/4 of the way across.

These last photos, which I'm going to put on without further explanation, were all taken that day at the Newport Aquarium. I will add that the Lorikeet that is seen serenely staring at the camera and then violently attacking it did this to every camera and every head or hand that got too close to it.

Family Split

Tomorrow morning at 6 AM Lisa and Meredith are boarding a bus and beginning something that Meredith has been talking about for at least two years: the 6th grade field trip to Washington, D.C. They'll be gone until late afternoon on Friday.

As I said, Meredith has been counting down the days basically for years and in earnest for the last month or so. She's been so excited the last few days that I thought she might have some kind of seizure. I don't think she was even able to enjoy this last weekend because she was looking forward so much to the trip.

Lisa, on the other hand...well, that's a different story. Initially (and by initially I mean two years ago) Lisa was very excited about the trip, and I remember a couple of years ago when Meredith asked if Lisa was going to chaperone the trip Lisa replying, "Meredith, nothing could keep me away from you if you're going to be in D.C." But now the reality of spending 12 hours on a chartered bus with 75 screaming 6th graders has started to hit Lisa, and I think she's at least dreading the bus rides if not the rest of the trip. She's pretty sure she'll be exhausted when she gets back Friday.

So that leaves Natalie and myself at home. I guess we'll just spend some quality time together, eat whatever we want, and do whatever we want. It won't be anything as exciting as Mount Vernon or the White House, but I'm looking forward to it.

Hopefully I'll have some photos of the trip to post in a week or so.

Quote of the Day

I don't know what to believe.
I just show up and breathe
anymore.

--Emily Saliers
"Lay My Head Down"

Computer Humor

I thought this was funny anyway...

Jesus Was a Democrat (part one)

Thought I'd avoid any controversial topics today...

I'm kidding. Of course that's a pretty inflammatory heading. And I don't really even mean it. I don't mean to suggest that Jesus really belonged to the Democratic Party. It didn't even exist until 2,000 years after he was on Earth. And besides, Jesus had plenty of opportunity to get into politics if he'd wanted to. Satan tempted him with political power, and the people on Palm Sunday wanted to make him a king, but he eschewed both offers, making it pretty clear that Jesus wasn't much interested in politics. But I do have a serious point here, one that's been percolating in my brain for three or four years now. I have so much to say about this topic, in fact, that I doubt I can cover it in a single blog entry, but I do want to cover it, so I plan on making several entries about it, at least three.

It all began, as I said, maybe three or four years ago. Lisa and I decided to join a small group Bible Study that was occurring regularly at the house of a friend of Lisa. There were maybe a total of six couples in this Bible study. I forget what book of the Bible we were studying, to be honest, and I forget most of the conversations that were occurring. I remember that the whole thing lasted about an hour and a half, with about 60 minutes of praying, reading, and conversation, and about 30 minutes of socializing afterward. What I remember more than anything, though, was one of the husbands. I don't want to use his real name, as I honestly have no idea who--if anyone--reads this blog and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So I just now googled most popular boy names for 1968 (my birth year) and I found that "Michael" was number one. So "Michael" it is.

Anyway, as I was saying, what I remember most about this Bible study was Michael. And what I remember about Michael was his brutish, bullish sense of surety coupled with an extreme conservative viewpoint. It was like this guy had swallowed a Jerry Falwell book or memorized all of the transcripts from all of the Focus on the Family broadcasts. Everything that came out of his mouth was Christian Right, Christian Right. Christian Right.

We only went to two or three of these Bible Study sessions before I told Lisa that I couldn't take Michael anymore, but some of the typical lines that came out of his mouth during those sessions were statements like these:

"The problem with society today is that the liberal media is trying every way possible to demean Christianity while promoting a gay and lesbian lifestyle in hopes of destroying all family values!"

"There are foolish people out there who honestly believe this godless science hogwash that the world is over 4,000 years old, oblivious to the fact that Satan himself may have put that fossil evidence in the ground to fool people and draw them into the fires of hell!"

"It's a fact--an absolute fact--that all Muslims see Christians as blasphemers, and that the Koran demands that Muslims kill and/or conquer all Christians! And that's why we're in Iraq! To stop the Christian killers!"

And notice how I put an exclamation point at the end of every one of these statements. That's because that's how Michael said them! There was no way someone could politely disagree with him. Any disagreement was going to immediately escalate into an argument. So I sat there pretty much staring at my shoes. And to be honest, I don't think I could have argued toe to toe with him anyway. Because while he was blasting out these fantastically complex and ludicrous statements, I was pretty much stuck on a single three word phrase that I kept repeating in my head over and over: "You're an idiot."

Anyway, I'm getting off point a little. Here's what I'm getting at: Because no one had the will or the gumption or the energy or whatever it would have taken to argue with Michael, he dominated the Bible Study. And because no one argued with his opinions, they felt like facts. And over cookies and soda during the social time on the last night that we attended, I remember one of the wives saying to Michael's wife, "I'm jealous of you. Your husband is so spiritual. He's a great Christian leader!"

That got under my skin. Lying in bed drifting off to sleep that night, I couldn't help but think about it: That's not a Christian, I told myself. That's not what a great Christian leader is. Being a Christian doesn't mean judging and dismissing people and being so cocksure of yourself that you never listen to anyone else. That's not Christian. It's just mean. And Jesus would NOT have chosen Michael as a disciple.

And Michael wasn't like any of the disciples. He reminded me more of the bad guys in the New Testament, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These were the cocksure judgers of the first century A.D., and if they'd had radio back then I'm pretty sure there would have been a Rush-Limbaugh-like conservative A.M. radio show hosted by a Pharisee.

And that's when it hit me: The Christian right has it all wrong. Jesus wasn't a conservative at all! Jesus was a liberal! The Christian right is on the wrong side of the fence!

In Matthew Chapter 15 Jesus said the following. He was talking to the Pharisees, but it occurred to me that his words could just as easily be directed at hatemongers and fear mongers of the Christian right:

7You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me. 9They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'"

So that Bible study and that moment in bed were the impetus behind this whole conceit that I've been spinning around in my head.

And that's all I'm going to talk about today. The next time I'll get into the meat of why I actually believe that Jesus today would find more in common with people on the left than people on the right.

Sign of the Times...Literally

I've always been irritated by the little bitty advertisements that people stick on utility poles or plant in the grass at major intersections. They usually have only two or three words on them and a phone number.

I suppose it's about the cheapest form of advertising there is, and I don't fault anyone trying to make a living, but I hate that--though I've seen entrepeneurs putting these signs up before--I've never seen them taking them down. It's up to the police, a civic organization, or the wind to do that, so that the signs are basically a form of littering.

So I don't like the signs, but yesterday I saw one and it struck me as being sort of a metaphor of a change in the American mindset. Because in the past when I saw those signs they tended to focus in on things that greedy Americans wanted. The signs would say "Make $$$ at Home 555-4364" or "Lose Weight Fast 555-8374" or "Learn to Invest 555-9624."

But things in America have changed. The days of the $100 hamburger are gone. And this is the sign I saw yesterday:

On the Hurricane and the Economy

Here's the lesson I learned from the (near) hurricane:

Things in this world are all kind of interwoven together.

Okay, maybe I didn't learn that from the (near) hurricane--I already knew that. But the (near) hurricane really reinforced this idea for me.

I learned that a lot depends upon the electricity, and not just keeping the eggs in my refrigerator from going bad. At one point Duke Energy (which is the main energy company in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area) had 1,205,240 power outages, which amounted to something like 96% of their entire customer base in this area. That's almost unfathomable. And I don't even know where the other 4% of the customers are who never lost their power. I've talked to dozens of people since the power outage and I've never had anyone tell me they NEVER lost power (And I'm not exaggerating about talking to dozens of people. "How are you holding up? Do you have power at your home?" has become the new "Hello" in this area.). And as of 8:25 last night there were still 258,873 power outages, representing more than 20% of the customer base.

By the way, if you're wondering what the status is right now, you can click here to find out.

With that large a blackout, repercussions went beyond just the inconvenience of no TV or electric lights. For instance, I'd never really thought about this before, but the gasoline pumps in front of convenience stores and service stations run on electricity. No electricity, no gas. That meant that Sunday 96% of the gas pumps in the Cincinnati area didn't work! As electricity was slowly restored more gas pumps came online, but lines--like the ones pictured here--quickly formed. This photo, by the way, was taken in Erlanger Sunday evening about 6:30 PM. Lisa snapped it out of the car window as we were driving around looking for an open restaurant or grocery store.

Anyway, getting back to the gas situation--With lines as long as the photo above showed on both Monday and Tuesday, I neglected going to the gas station, despite the fact that all of the driving around I'd done Sunday night had almost drained my gas tank. Tuesday on the way in to work, in fact, the yellow warning light lit up on my gas gauge. I decided that, no matter what, I'd get gas on the way home.

But here's the problem: When I left for home Tuesday night, I discovered that the gas stations that were bustling and filled with cars in their lots Tuesday morning were almost completely empty Tuesday afternoon. Why? Because the gas was gone! Their tanks had been completely drained. There simply weren't enough working gas pumps to meet the demand. I tried six different gas stations on the way home, and they all had "Out of Gas" signs taped to their pumps or "Out of Order" sleeves over their pump handles.

I got the car home and took the van to work yesterday. I had a dentist appointment at 9:45 (just a cleaning, nothing serious), and afterward I drove around looking for a gas station that was powered up and had some gas. After trying four stations with no luck I found that the Marathon just up the street from our house had gas. I quickly filled up the van in fear that all the gas might be gone before I could get back, and then I raced home and got the car. I went back to the station, which did still have gas, and I filled up the car's almost empty tank. And it's funny, too, how a crisis like that puts things in perspective. Gas is $4.15 a gallon in this area, and I didn't complain at all about paying that high a price when I needed it. As I got back in the car, I thought to myself, You know, in the last 15 minutes I've spent almost $120 to fill up two gas tanks, and I'm glad to have done it!

But gas wasn't the only thing in short supply. Monday I left work early and came home to help the girls clean the yard. I decided (foolishly, I now realize) to stop at LaRosa's and get us a pizza. But with 80% of the area still without power, I quickly found that any and all restaurants were absolutely swamped. I'd called my order in, and I could see it sitting behind the register when I got into the restaurant, but the line of people waiting to order or pick up their order was so long that it took me a good 30 minutes just to get up to the counter to pick up the food.

And today Lisa asked me to pick up some eggs at Kroger on the way home from work. I stopped at Kroger, but their power had just come on only a few hours ago, and they literally had NO perishables in the store. The dairy aisle, the meat counter, the freezers all were empty. I was told that a truck would be by sometime after midnight with a delivery for them, but that they didn't have anything now. I told them I didn't think I could wait that long and went on home.

So like I said, I know we all know that electricity is important, essential even, for our modern life. But it's amazing how interconnected everything is. It gives me an appreciation for what's been going on with the economy. Lots of people that I've talked with have complained about the federal government's bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and AIG. Truth be told, I don't like that my taxes are going to prop up those companies any more than the next guy does. But if AIG is to the world economy what electricity is to life in Cincinnati, I don't want to see it fail anytime soon.

Photos of the (Almost) Hurricane

Thought I would include some photos of the recent storm. In this photo you can see the leaves and branches blown down in between Buildings Two and Three of the Museum. You can also see that one of the window screens was blown out of Building Two (it's on the ground below it). The building in the back of the photo (Building Four) was struck by a tree that was bent in half by a huge wind gust. It's hard to see in that photo but you can see it in the photo below. The tree is hanging down to the left of the building. If you squint you can just make out the bent up gutter on the left edge of the building.

I don't think anything fell and hit this gutter. At least I couldn't find any fallen limbs that would account for the damage. I think the winds just got ahold of it and ripped the nails out of the roof line. It's currently hanging by a single roofing nail.

We had to throw out a number of the flowers in the yard as they looked like this. The stalks were broken and I don't think they were ever going to look again like they'd looked before. It's pretty clear from this photo which direction the wind was blowing in, isn't it?

As I've said in previous posts, though, it's hard to get too upset by the damage. All in all it was pretty light. There are people within walking distance of our house who had a LOT more damage than this.

In addition to the photos above, I also created a PhotoSynth of the damage, but it's not even as good as my first attempt (In fairness to Microsoft, they want you to take literally 100's of pictures, and I'm not willing to do that). If you installed the software last time, you can view it here:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=095D3BE8-4511-462A-98A9-83F0D7897C5E

Wow! They can put these ads together fast!

Last week I thought I had found the best Obama ad of the year...and it wasn't even an ad!

If this one, which is a real ad, doesn't beat it, it comes close!




And what amazes me about it is how quickly they put it together. That speech happened YESTERDAY!

Quick Update

The power came back on at our house at about 10:00 yesterday morning...and then went off again at about 6:45 PM. Power was restored for (hopefully) the last time at about 7:30 last night.

I worked until noon yesterday and then came home to help the family with the cleanup. It took me over an hour to get home. You would have thought it was the end of the world. Lines at the gas stations ran five or six cars deep, and if there was an open restaurant or grocery store the line of cars trying to get in ran out into the streets, blocking traffic. I'd rather deal with snow than deal with yesterday.

I got home and the girls had done an AMAZING amount of work. I jumped in and helped them. By the end of the day we had filled twenty-two 39 gallon trash bags with yard waste, and that was only the small debris! We just dragged the big branches into the back yard behind all of the museum buildings. We'll deal with those on another day.

We lost all of the eggs and dairy in our refrigerator, and our wireless router at home was fried by the power surges (thought our DVD/hard drive recorder was fried as well, but I got it working again by resetting it). All told we had about $300 in losses (though the museum will have a little more than that from the gutter damage and the cost of tree removal). Not much at all, really. I've seen on TV where giant trees have gone through people's houses, pretty much leveling them. And here in my office, where eight people work, three are still without power this morning.

Most school districts in Northern Kentucky are off today (including the girls'), but we're one of the few that's in session today, so I must get back to work. Just wanted to let you know we were alive.

Click here for a video of cleanup in Fort Mitchell.

More yIKEs!

Okay, I'm at work now where there is electricity, so I can quickly write a bit more while I'm waiting for the servers to reboot...

...In some ways, I blame myself for this. Saturday morning at breakfast, after watching all of the reporters from all of the stations getting blown around by Hurricane Ike, I said, "You know, I'd like to be in a hurricane once. It kind of looks like fun to stand out in the wind and hold onto your hat while stuff blows by!"

I think God gave me the smackdown yesterday!

We went to church at 11 in the morning yesterday, and as we walked into church the winds were blowing briskly, like an early April wind. "Feel that?" I told Natalie. "That's the remnants of Hurricane Ike. It's only going to get worse as the day goes along." When we left church at about 12:30 in the afternoon, the wind was about twice as strong. "Look," I told the family as we sat at a traffic light. I was pointing to a hill in the distance. "It looks like the trees are waving to us!"

"Hi!" Natalie shouted back.

So it was all good fun, until...

Natalie had Odyssey of the Mind practice from 1:30 to 2:30. I drove her to her classmate's house, where the practice was being held, and on the way back home I was amazed at the number of leaves and branches that were blowing around. At one point my view out of the windshield was almost completely obscured by leaves and branches. I got home at 1:35 and the electricity went out about a minute after I got into the house. Well, I won't be able to watch the Bengals after all, I told myself, so I jumped back in the van and headed for Florence. Meredith is going to have her birthday party in less than a month and it's going to be at a skating rink, and this particular rink does not take credit cards, so I had to physically take a check over to the rink (What century are these people living in?). As I was pulling to a stop at one traffic light there were four sets of bikers in the lane beside me (two of the bikers had biker chicks behind them on their seats). Just before I pulled up beside them a MAJOR gust of wind hit and all four bikes tumbled over in unison. If the gust had come five seconds later my van probably would have sheltered them from the wind. I jumped out of the van to see if they were okay. They were, but their bikes all had minor damage.

Once I got back from the skating rink the wind was, I think, at its worst. I was looking out the back window when the largest gust I'd seen to that point hit. Two large trees cracked like they were NOTHING! One tree struck Building Four of the museum and dented up the front gutter. The other just lost two major branches and they ended up in the yard in front of Building One. We took plenty of pictures, and I'll post them soon.

By then it was 2:30 and time to go get Natalie. We hopped in the car this time (lower profile) and headed to pick up Natalie. We then went to Lisa's Dad's house because they had power. We stayed and watched the Bengals game (What a disappointment) and then Lisa and I went out looking for food (Her dad didn't have much at his house). We started at the Fort Mitchell Kroger. Closed due to power outage. We then went to the Erlanger Kroger. Closed due to power outage. We then went to the Florence Biggs. Their power had just come back on. We got a premade salad and a couple of pizzas and headed back to her dad's house. We had dinner and went home at 8 o'clock, hoping the power would be back on. It wasn't.

We've been told that it will probably be sometime Tuesday before it's back on. I guess the food in our freezer and refrigerator will go bad. That's just how it goes, I guess. I came back into work to turn on all of the servers and see how things are going. Everything seems okay, which I consider a miracle. All told we have about 10 miles of fiber optic lines running through the city of Erlanger, and they all survived.

The servers have restarted. I'll write more later.

yIKEs

storm blew thru yesterday. 700,000 duke energy customers without power. we have ben without since 1 yesterday afternoon. told it could be up to a week. no school today. what a crazy day. got to go now. cell phone battery dying. will write more later.

Quote of the Day

You know, me and Jesus,
We're of the same heart
The only thing that keeps us distant
Is that I keep f***ing up

Amy Ray
"Shame on You"

And people wonder why our schools are failing!

As an educator, I couldn't decide how to react to this article. Should I laugh? Cry? Shake my head and say, "This world is going in the can."

And I couldn't help but imagine what Dr. Phil would have said if he had this family on his TV show. "Let me get this straight," he'd slowly drawl, "You let your child drop out of school. And you let him drop out to do...to do...WHAT?"

Anyway, I figure you need to read the whole article for yourself, 'cause if I just summarized it here you wouldn't believe me, so here it is.

John Stewart should work for Barack Obama

I saw this last weekend. It's from The Daily Show with John Stewart. The video is being played for laughs, but in my mind it's more damning than any negative ad I've seen from the Obama campaign. If you played only the last half of it and put some ominous music behind it instead of people laughing, you'd have the best ad of the whole campaign.

An Intentional Distraction by Any Other Name...

This silliness about Obama using the phrase "put lipstick on a pig" is what I was talking about a couple of weeks ago when I said I wanted a campaign without intentional lies! The phrase "You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig" has been around for 100 years (It's sort of a down homey way of saying Shakespeare's line "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"). There's only two explanations for the uproar: 1) Either the people who are complaining are too stupid to know the expression has been around forever (and has been used by BOTH candidates long before any of us had heard any comments about bulldogs and lipsticks), or 2) They know the phrase is a common one and are just trying to cause controversy. Because I don't want to call anyone stupid, I'll assume the latter.

And I'm telling you this: If the McCain campaign thought their stupid ad was going to convince me to vote for them, they're sadly mistaken. In fact, it's had the opposite effect. I'm so sick of this stupid pettiness that I'll vote for Obama to spite them. I hope the rest of the undecided and open-minded feel the same way.

Here's what Obama should come back with: "Apparently we're not allowed to use common phrases anymore if our rivals use a word from that phrase in their speeches. So I can't say 'lipstick' in ANY phrase, huh? I can't say 'You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig' when what I really mean is 'You can try to make something look different but that doesn't make it different'?

"That's fine with me. I'll stop saying that...as soon as my opponent stops using the word 'change' and stops saying 'A Change is Coming' when what he really mean is 'Four more years of the same thing.'"

And if--as it would appear--Barack Obama can no longer use the word "lipstick" and/or any phrase that contains "lipstick," I guess he should also avoid the following well-known phrases:

1. A bridge over Troubled Waters
2. Shining nowhere but in the dark
3. "H" - "E" double hockey sticks.
4. Mom knows best.
5. Quick, get in the car. That pit bull looks like it's going to attack! (Okay, so maybe that one isn't a famous phrase. Still, if there's ever a time when Barack Obama DOES need to use that phrase, I hope this incident doesn't make him hesitate to say it!)

My respect for the Republican nominee and his staff was cut in half with this petty exchange. I was willing to overlook the comparisons between Obama and Britney Spears, but this has reached a new low. It's really sad, and it leads me to believe that the Republicans--as the Democrats have asserted for months--really DON'T have anything substantive to say about the issues. They know they can't win based on anything real, so they're making up stuff now.

I may need to rethink my party affiliation.

Ventriloquism Article

Lisa was interviewed by a Pittsburgh newspaper not too long ago as part of an article about ventriloquism, and the final product includes quite a bit of that interview. You can read the article at http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/living/events/s_587136.html .

One caveat, though, and this is why I don't trust the media: The article states that Lisa is "featured" in an upcoming documentary called I'm No Dummy and goes on to say that it also includes Jeff Dunham, Jimmy Nelson, and other vents in it, giving the impression that Lisa is the star of the documentary. She actually gets just a couple of minutes while everyone else gets all of the time.

You can't believe what you read.

Oucho Stinko!

I'm sad to say it, but the Bengals somehow managed even to exceed my expectations of how badly they would play. I can't believe that we're one week into the season and I have such little interest in the Bengals.

The game Sunday wasn't even fun to watch! Back in 1991-2005, when they managed to stink for almost a decade and a half, they were at least entertaining to watch, as a fan could always tune in to find out what kind of slapstick way they were going to lose that week! Would they lead the whole game and then allow a 92 yard rushing touchdown with 45 seconds left in the game? Would Sam Wyche take the microphone from the stadium announcer to remind Cincy fans that they didn't live in Cleveland? Would Jon Kitna try to throw a football but lose his grip and have it bounce off of his helmet before a lineman grabbed it in midair, a lineman who weighed 425 pounds but still somehow managed to lumber to the end zone for a touchdown, with Kitna holding him by the ankles the whole way? Would Carl Pickens drop a sure touchdown and drop to his knees in the end zone in agony? Ahh, we didn't win many games, but at least they were fun.

But Sunday's game was just...just...boring! I flipped the channels a couple of times hoping that maybe the Top 100 Moments in Soap Opera History would be on, or a documentary on the History Channel about perfume manufacturers during World War I, anything that might be a little more exciting than the game. And I couldn't help but think, "Why am I even watching this game? They sure didn't show up! Why should I?"

I'll give 'em another week, but if they don't play better next week, that might be it for me.

And maybe I should be grateful to the Bengals. After all, there's a game next week and 14 more after that. Each game lasts 3 1/2 hours. If I end up NOT watching the last 14 games that's 14 X3 1/2 equals 49 hours! That's more than 2 days of my life that I will be able to spend doing something productive rather than lying on the couch watching the Bengals descend into chaos. Think what I could accomplish with that time! I should be happy.

Thanks, Mike Brown!

P.S. I wonder how many other people changed Chad Ocho Cinco's name to "Oucho Stinko" as a headline? Probably only about 342,000! There I go again, showing my lack of individuality!

Lost in the Cemetery

Saturday afternoon was such a beautiful day that the family decided we wanted to do something outside. After debating a trip to the zoo or maybe a trip to a public park we decided to go hiking. I've written a couple of times about trips we've taken to the Cincinnati Nature Center (You can see photos of our trips here and here), but Natalie had mentioned before that we could go hiking at a nearby cemetery that her Girl Scouts had been to once before.

There are three--count 'em, three--cemeteries within walking distance of our house? Why so many? There's an Irish Catholic cemetery, a German Catholic cemetery, and a Protestant cemetery. We looked online, and the hiking trails are in the non-Catholic cemetery, Highland Cemetery, which is right across Dixie Highway, so we all put on our walking shoes and headed off for the woods.

It seemed like a good idea, but what we didn't count on was a) how large the Highland Cemetery is (There are parts of it in three different towns) and b) how far back into the cemetery we had to walk before we even reached the hiking trails.

It was so far, in fact, that Lisa and Meredith gave up and headed back home before we even reached the entrance of the hiking trails. Natalie and I, though, really wanted to go into the woods, so we walked on and found the hiking trails not really that much further up the road from where Lisa and Meredith turned around.

We took the primary trail, which wasn't all that long, but it wasn't short, either. It was one and a half miles, which is only six times around a track. However, when you're walking six times around a track you're not going up and down hills, stepping through creeks, and dodging poison ivy. Natalie and I did all of that, and by the time we emerged from the woods over an hour after we went in, we were exhausted.

And worse, we had no idea where we were. There were maps at the entrance of the walking trails, but I didn't feel like grabbing one. We'll probably come out right here where we went in, I told myself, and if not we'll figure it out.


But when we came out everything looked different. I couldn't find ANY reference point that would even begin to tell me in what direction to go to get back to the entrance of the cemetery. And my tension was exacerbated by the fact that we came out not in the cemetery main, but in the pet cemetery. I don't know why, but something about a pet cemetery just seems surreal. I told Natalie, "We are flat out lost."

Thank goodness Lisa and Meredith had headed home. When they got home and checked the answering machine they heard this message: "Help Lisa! Help Meredith! We're lost in the cemetery! And we're thirsty! Come find us!"

I started looking at the web browser on my smartphone looking for the Highland Cemetery website so that I could find a map of the site to tell me in which direction to go. Before I could figure it out Lisa called, laughing, and told me she was on her way. Ten minutes later she and Meredith came around the corner and picked us up.

All in all, though, it was a nice time. Next time, though, we're driving to the entrance of the hiking trails, and we're taking one of those free maps.

More on Sarah Palin

I think I might be a little obsessed over the topic of Sarah Palin, and for no good reason, as the Vice-Presidential pick is, in the end, pretty inconsequential to the entire Presidential campaign...

...After all, it was Palin herself who just a few weeks ago said that she didn't even know what a Vice-President did!

But today something new is troubling me about Palin, and it really isn't political. It's personal. I question her judgement in accepting the Republican nomination. Not because she's not qualified. Not because of Troopergate, or whatever you want to call it. I question it because of the effect it's having on her daughter, Bristol.

She had to know that at some point in the election the world was going to find out about her daughter's pregnancy, and that at that point her daughter's sexual life, something that ought to be private and personal, was going to become front page news. We're not talking a seasoned politician's sex life becoming front page news--we're talking a 17 year old child who did not choose this for herself.

What mother (or father, for that matter) would choose advancing her career over protecting her daughter from an avalanche of vitriol? I know, in the same circumstance, I'd turn down the job rather than expose either of my kids to that kind of trauma.

Then again, maybe that explains why she's a governor and a Vice-Presidential nominee while I'm a guy who plays with computers!

Again, this is a personal question for me, not a political one. As such, it won't factor into my decision to vote for McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden. It's just something that bothers me.

Pandora

I'm a little late to the game on this, but I've discovered a new-to-me site that I simultaneously love and despise.

The site is called Pandora. It's been around for years, and I've known about it for about nine months (Lisa introduced me to it), but I never really took the time to check it out until about six weeks ago. It's an online streaming radio site, and what makes it really great is that it allows you to create a radio "station" based on a favorite artist of yours, and then it streams music by that artist, sure, but also music from artists LIKE that artist. You can rate the music that it chooses with either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and based on your rating the program "learns" your musical taste. So the more you use Pandora, the better it gets at giving you music you want to hear. You can even click a button to find out why it's giving you certain songs.

As I said, I both love and hate this site. I love it because it absolutely gives me the music I want to hear. I've created two stations so far: a Bruce Springsteen station and an Indigo Girls station (two of my favorite artists). The Bruce Springsteen station consistently delivers music I already know by musicians I like: Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger (he's not my favorite, but the songs that Pandora dishes out are the ones I like), and similar artists. And I don't know many of the artists that my Indigo Girls station dishes out, but I love what I get. I've already found some new artists and I'm going to buy their music soon.

What I hate about the site is that it depresses me, because it makes me feel like I'm not an individual. I've always thought I had a really unique, eclectic musical taste, but it turns out that I'm pretty much exactly like every other Bruce Springsteen and Indigo Girls fan (except that I'm not a lesbian--at least I don't think I am). I don't like that my individuality can be so easily broken down and analyzed. It's sort of like the news story that came out in the middle of the week this past week that said that there is a gene that determines whether a male human is faithful to his wife or not. I don't WANT a gene to be determining that. I want my high moral standards and my love for my wife to be the reason I'm monogamous.

But it turns out that's not the case--it's all genetic code, like I'm some vast computer program. And my eclectic musical taste really comes down to the fact, as Pandora tells me, that I like "mellow rock instrumentations, folk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation."

Despite what adults hammered into my belief system when I was a kid, I'm not all that unique after all.

Unmoved

John McCain's and Sarah Palin's speeches at the Republican convention have helped me make up my mind: I'm (probably) voting for Obama/Biden.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't think McCain or Palin gave bad speeches. I thought they were both good. In fact, I thought Palin's in particular was sizzling! Her intelligence and charm were evident, and her attacks on Obama particularly effective.

In fact, it's not because the speeches were bad that I was convinced to vote for Obama. It's because they were excellent. Because, despite the excellent speeches, I went to bed last night and the night before still unmoved by the Republican message or agenda. It's not enough to keep saying that the United States of America is a great place and is strong. And ecstatic cheers from a partisan crowd do nothing to convince me of an argument (The same can be said, by the way, for the Democratic nominees. Obama's speech at the stadium made for good theater, but it was the points he made, not the venue or the crowd, that convinced me.).

So barring some shocking piece of news about Obama or Biden, or an absolute knockout punch in the debates, I will be pulling the lever for the Democrats in November.

Still on the election but on a different note, a few days ago I posted that I thought Palin would be a real drag on McCain's ticket, eventually costing him the election. You might wonder if I sheepishly want to eat my words after the rousing speech she gave two days ago and the glowing praise that speech earned from all but the most liberal-leaning members of the media.

The answer is no.

Not yet anyway.

And here's the reason why: When I heard about the McCain choice of Palin as Vice-President, I had what felt like a hand in my back pushing me to complain about it. I can't explain it. It was an almost spiritual experience, like it was God pushing me. I guess the feeling I got would be the same feeling someone would have if, while standing at the overlook of Niagra Falls, a friend said, "You know, I'm pretty sure I can fly, and I'm going to give it a try now." Before you can say anything everyone around the person is sincerely saying, "Yes, I believe you can fly, too. Give it a try." It's a feeling of insistent panic. Like I said, as if God is pushing you to do something.

I've had that feeling before, but not often. The last time I had it was on the eve of our invasion of Iraq. I remember standing in the kitchen at Vent Haven with Lisa, and I had just a sense of agitation all about me. Lisa could read it in my body language. "What's wrong with you?" she asked me.

"I'm so upset," I said as I practically jogged in place, "because I KNOW--I just KNOW--that this invasion of Iraq is a mistake. And it's driving me crazy because I am completely, absolutely, and wholly unable to do anything about it." I almost had tears in my eyes when I said, "I've just got a bad feeling about this."

"Why?" Lisa asked me. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"Well," I told her, "if Saddam DOES have weapons of mass destruction--which he doesn't--but if he does--he's not going to go out without a fight. Hundreds or thousands of American soldiers are going to be killed by him. And if he DOESN'T have weapons of mass destruction--which he doesn't--here is what's going to happen..." I then described for her pretty much what has happened over the last five years, right down to the Iraqi army melting into the populace, and a guerrilla war being fought in the cities, to the covert involvement in the war by Iraq's Shiite neighbors, to the mounting casualties and the years--not months, as many were predicting at the time, but years--that we would be involved in what would amount to a civil war we'd be unable to extricate ourselves from.

When I finished she said, "Okay, if you're so smart, how's it all going to end then?"

"We'll find some reason," I told her, "some token reason for getting out of there. It won't be anything really. It will just be a token. Maybe the Iraqi government will hold free elections, or the Iraqi police force will arrest some terrorists, and at that point we'll declare victory and get the hell out. And six months after we leave cracks will show in Iraq's democratic veneer, and in two years the whole government will have collapsed and the country will no longer be a country and will have fallen into chaos. Most likely the country of Iraq will cease to exist and three new nations will arise, with the northern provinces ruled by the Kurds, a wealthy, central area ruled by Sunnis with Baghdad as its center, and a southern section that either becomes its own Shiite state or else becomes part of Iran. It'll take decades for the region to recover, and the prospect of real peace in the Middle East will have been destroyed for a generation."

Did I mention I'm an optimist?

Anyway, I guess my prediction wasn't completely accurate, because there have been plenty of token accomplishments when we could have left and we're still there. But I got a lot of it right.

I'm not bragging about my prescient powers, nor arguing that my two semesters of political science in my undergraduate studies 20 years ago have prepped me for a job at the state department. What I'm getting at is this: On April 9, 2003, when the U.S. Army marched into Baghdad with hardly any casualties at all, and when the U.S. soldiers toppled the big statue of Saddam in the public square, I was watching on television with my English classes (No, it's not English related, but this was history in the making!), and as I saw the Iraqi citizens cheering the U.S. soldiers, one thought entered my mind: I was completely wrong. That strong feeling I had the night before the invasion wasn't clarity or clairvoyance or anything. It was just a feeling.

Later, of course, I found out that I was more right than I knew then. And that's what I think will happen with this Sarah Palin thing, too. It seems I'm completely wrong. It seems she's the savior of the Republican party. It seems she can do no wrong, and that John McCain is a frigging GENIUS to have selected her.

We'll see.

Word of the Day

I'm 40 years old, so I don't hear many new words that aren't made up words (like "omg" or "bling" or "spyware"), so I'm always a little excited to expand my vocabulary a little.

Here's a word I'd never heard before until today:

frum.

It was in an article about Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. In the article she was described as a "frum Christian." Thought it was a misspelling at first (though I have no idea what word I thought was misspelled). I had to look it up.

So here's the definition (drum roll please)...

..."religious or Pious." It also turns out that it's not English. It's Yiddish.

I was reading the online version of the Israel Times. That would explain it.

The Bungles

Two days ago I made a "bold" prediction about the 2008 Presidential race. Today, since I'm apparently on a prophetic bent, I thought I'd make a decidedly less bold prediction about the 2008 NFL season:

The Bengals are going to be terrible.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Bengals fan, and I hope against the odds that I'm wrong, but the off season and the pre-season had all of the ear markings of a disaster in the making. Here are the specifics, in my opinion, of this season:

1) The Bengals will go 5-11 this season.
2) Chad Johnson will miss 5 games due to injury. There will be plenty of speculation that he's not really injured.
3) Chris Henry will get suspended for some off the field misdemeanor sometime about week 11 and will be given a lifetime suspension.
4) Carson Palmer will have career highs in sacks and interceptions, and will miss a total of three games due to injury.
5) The defense will be the worst ranked defense in the NFL. Some of that ranking will be unfair and really be the fault of the offense as the offense will have been on the field for such a short amount of time that the defense just found itself exhausted by the end of the game.
6) This will be Marvin Lewis's last season with the Bengals. He will not be fired. He and Mike Brown will decide together that it is time for Lewis to leave, and he'll be glad as hell to get out of town.

That's what I think, anyway.

The good news for the Cincinnati Bengals, I guess, is that anything better than that will be a pleasant surprise.

But don't count on the pleasant surprise. Count on a long season.

Bad Neighbors

Lisa and I have had our share of bad neighbors over the years (We've also had our share of GOOD neighbors, too, but that's a post for another day). Once a neighbor had a dog who the family put out in the morning, then went to work, and didn't bring back in until the family got home from work in the afternoon. The dog barked the entire time they were gone, and when we said something about it, their reply basically came down to "Get used to it." Another neighbor had a house about fifteen feet away from our house, and he set off hundreds of fireworks every Fourth of July. We were picking up the empty casings for weeks afterward.

By far the worst neighbor we've ever had, though, we have right now, and that's the hotel that is behind Vent Haven's property. When we moved into Vent Haven eight years ago the hotel was a Holiday Inn, and it was fairly nice. We even went to a birthday party held there once, and there was a nice indoor pool.

Then in about 2004 the hotel lost its Holiday Inn franchise license. Shorty thereafter it became a Best Western. The quality of the hotel fell a little, but it was still okay.

It was two years ago that the hotel really started to fall apart. It lost its Best Western license for whatever reason and for a long time just had a bright yellow sign up that with black letters said "HOTEL." It's now called "USA HOTELS," but it's really nasty. It advertises a weekly fee, and from what I understand most of the people who stay there are staying there long term, as in weeks and weeks. It's become a really scummy place for criminals and low life people to live.

The city tried to combat the problem by passing an ordinance stating that hotels in Fort Mitchell could only allow guests to stay for a fixed amount of time. The hotel responded by having guests check out on a weekly basis and then check back in again.

It's a really, really terrible hotel now, and I feel sorry for the people who unwittingly stay there. You can actually read the reactions of these people by visiting these links:

Unbelievably Bad Reviews #1

Unbelievably Bad Reviews #2

Unbelievably Bad Reviews #3

With so many bad reviews out there, I'm amazed that anyone would even think about staying at this hotel. And let's get this straight: Most of the glowing reviews are written by the hotel owner to make the place look good.

Anyway, I've heard rumors that the hotel has been sold and that the whole place is going to be torn down and turned into a strip mall. We can only hope.

Turning Point

I'm sure you've heard this (or the opposite viewpoint) from people who are smarter than I am, but I just want to go on record as having said it:

McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate is going to be looked back on as the turning point of this Presidential race...

...It will be viewed as the point at which McCain blew it!

The minute I read of McCain's choice Friday afternoon, I immediately saw it as a boneheaded choice for several reasons:

1. Palin's lack of experience UNDERMINES McCain's argument that Obama is inexperienced. How can he argue that Obama isn't experienced enough to run for President when Palin has even less experience than Obama and will be second in line if McCain wins?
2. It ENHANCES the argument (never made by Obama but often made by Obama's henchmen and the media) that McCain's age is a factor in the election. After all, if McCain dies now, we're leaving the Presidency in the hands of a complete newcomer to national politics.
3. Let's quit lying to ourselves: McCain chose Palin in part because she's a woman and he's hoping to steal some Clinton supporters. But this plan is going to backfire on him. Sure, in the short term women will get excited by this pick. But when Obama's camp starts hitting back with ads that say something like this--"John McCain thinks that the women of America will vote for a woman, any woman, if that person is on the ticket. Who cares if that woman..." The ad will then list every way that Palin differs from moderate and liberal values, and then come back with, "Does John McCain think women are that stupid? Is he that sexist? Is that how little he thinks of women?"--in the long term I think McCain will find he's alienated a lot of women voters.
4. Another reason McCain chose Palin is because he wants to reinforce his maverick image, to give the idea that he is a change candidate, too. However, Obama's people will come back with ads that say the following: "John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate because he wants to be about change. But putting an unknown, untested person on the ticket is not change. President Bush believes..." and the ad will then list some issue that Bush and Palin agree on. "Sarah Palin believes that, too." "President Bush wants..." and then the ad will come back with "So does Sarah Palin." The ad will end with "McCain/Palin. Not change at all. Just more of the same."

In 20 years we'll look back on McCain's choice and call it one of the dumbest political moves ever made by a candidate.

That's my prediction, anyway.