We took the kids to see “This Is It” at the theater today… I went somewhat reluctantly, not exactly being a big MJ fan…

I don’t know what I dreaded more, the thought of seeing the abject Jacko weirdness up close and personal or the cringe factor of some slapped together crap designed solely to make money off yet another dead guy.

Well, I must say that it was neither. Not in totality at least. In all honesty, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a good movie. Not great, mind you and it didn’t turn me into a Jacko fan by any stretch… but it was fairly balanced, pretty well done and, for the most part, entertaining.

 I will even go as far as to recommend it.

After all, it IS Halloween…

Nick Saban just said “This was a great win for Alabama…”

 The # 1 (or # 2) ranked team in the nation wins against unranked Tennessee by 2 points (and barely at that) without being able to score a single touchdown.

Really? Nick? “A great win”?

It just goes to prove my old saying: “Nick Saban is a complete and utter idiot”.

If you are an Alabama fan and are celebrating right now, you are just as fupid as your coach.

# 1, huh?

Right.

More photos from our trip to Savannah…

 That thing I said about “They Might Be Giants” appearance on NPR’s Science Friday possibly being the coolest thing ever?  Uh…

Sorry, TMBG, you just got pwned!

You’ve no doubt seen it, or heard it, dozens of times by now – Joe Wilson shouting “You Lie!” as president Obama truthfully insisted that his proposed changes to health care “would not apply to those who are here illegally”.

You know, I’m all for free speech. Joe Wilson is entitled to his opinion – financially motivated though it is. And he’s entitled to his opinion even if it is factually incorrect. And I firmly believe he has every right to express his factually incorrect, financially motivated opinion in any way he chooses. If, that is, he is willing to accept the consequences of doing so in such a totally inappropriate manner and venue.

The thing that bothers me most about the whole debacle is that Wilson is representative of the increasing number of folks who confound “my desire” or “my belief” with “the truth”… as if anyone who disagrees with me must be lying.

As if the President must be lying simply because Mr. Wilson believes differently.

Perhaps the genteel souls who schooled me in American civics, government, history and political science were the real liars. Maybe it was they who lied when they told me that, above its sometimes crass exterior, politics was an honorable pursuit. Possibly they were the ones who fibbed when they taught us that leading was something to be admired and that underneath the sometimes vehement debates were substantial discussion leading to consensus and improved governance. Maybe the real whopper was the idea that truth can be discovered by sharing knowledge and carrying out civilized discourse.

I guess they all got it wrong.

It’s really all about who can shout the loudest.

Thanks for clearing that up, Joe.

It’s been well over a month since I posted anything. Once again, that wasn’t really intentional. I just got busy and time slipped away. So, here we are, in the latter half of August. The kids are back in school… the year is progressing. But it’s still hotter than blazes here and it’s still summer, so…

What did we do on our summer “staycation”? Glad you asked…

Tad and I went fishing…

He loved every minute of it!

I caught a stick.

We celebrated Shelby’s birthday. She had asked for, and was convinced she would not get, an electric bass.

Yeah, she was pretty pleased to say the least. She’s really taken to it and can already play a few songs. (I’m teaching of course). She thought it was cool when I explained that upon learning the chord progression to “Lord I Lift Your Name On High”, she also knew “Louie, Louie”. Stacie was somewhat less pleased and even less so when I taught her how to play “Smoke On the Water”.

He, he, he…

Incidentally, she’s playing “Smoke…” for a school project and will play “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in church tomorrow with the “praise band” (that would be me, the pastor, Shelby and Tad).

And, despite having lived 15 miles from Lynchburg Tennessee almost all my life, I have never visited the Jack Daniel distillery. So guess what we did…

Yep, we toured the distillery. That’s Tad there with Jasper Newton Daniel himself. I’m not into distilled spirits at all but I must say the tour was very interesting and educational.

What else, hmmm. The garden has gone from bare dirt to verdant to withering. Tomatoes have been canned and much salsa has been made. Let’s not talk about the corn and cabbage.

I’ve also spent a lot of time recently doing church work. We have a new pastor who needs to be trained and we’re trying an ultra-contemporary evening service that I am co-leading. Add in church council, education and all the other stuff that I do and there really has been no time to write much less visit blogs.

I have some ideas brewing for posts and such so maybe I’ll have something meaningful soon. Until then, I plan to visit all those fellow bloggers I have neglected for far too long!

Hope you all had a good summer too!

15! I hope you have a wonderful day. I love you!

It recently became obvious that after more than three years we were badly in need of new cell phones. Not one of them was 100% functional any more and all were badly outdated. So we went down to the old VZ showroom and oooh’ed and aaah’d over all the shiny new gizmodos. I was temped to go for a cutting edge Barack-Berry but it seems like everyone has one these days and, while Verizon’s price is great, the extra monthly charge didn’t fit into my budget so well. Of course there are other smart-phones and PDA’s available and I played with a bunch of them… but ultimately, the combination of features (virtually everything a Blackberry can do plus a lot more), the price (same as the BB after the rebate but minus the extra monthly fee) and the added gee-whiz factor of this baby won me over:

For those still using a long piece of string and a couple of tin cans, that’s an LG enV Touch. The outside is all touch screen – touted as LG’s iPhone killer. And it is… But open it up and it serves quite nicely as a Blackberry killer too… OK, maybe not a killer but a good substitute:Despite the enV moniker, this is actually the updated and much improved version of LG’s Voyager phone.  In all honesty, this thing is like a micro laptop. I’ve got all my music on-board, the excellent stereo blue-tooth setup, a 3.2 mp camera – good for all but the most special-est photos, a decent camcorder, email anywhere (even without wi-fi), full HTML web browsing, basic wordprocessing and document viewing, calendar, alarm clock, note pad, full voice controls, sketch pad, 3D video games and so on and so on. I even amazed my friends the other day by wathcing a TV show (via Hulu) on my cell phone.

And in addition to the haptic touch screen and the full physical QWERTY keypad, there’s a virtual QWERTY keypad and two numeric phonepads as well (one physical, one virtu-touch). Additionally, I can import or store data, photos, music or anything else on the micro SD memory card and, awesomely, it also transfers data through a standard/micro USB cord. That means I can put any data that is on my computer on my phone or vice-versa… while charging the battery!

But my most favorite feature so far of my new toy is the handwriting recognition pad. I can write emails, text mesages, notes, contacts and just about anythng else using a stylus on the surprisingly large write pad. And unlike the PDA’s of just a couple of years ago, this handwriting recognition actually works. It recognizes most of the letters you write naturally without having to learn some kind of cryptic pseudobet.

And above all that, you can even call people on it.

 Bottom line – I love it!

Just in case you were wondering… and I seriously doubt anyone is at this point… my previous post was my 500th on WordPress.com!

Heck, I didn’t even know it myself until WP’s dashboard told me so. Who would’ve thunk I had that much to say? OK, so maybe I do have a lot to say. But it doesn’t seem like it recently. I’m slowly getting used to this new schedule – both life schedule and blogging schedule – so maybe this is a kind of a new beginning.

And “new” may just be my theme over the next couple of weeks. I have several “new” things to tell all both of my dedicated readers about…

(That’s what you literary types might call foreshadowing…)

Until next time…

Tschuss.