Thursday, March 30, 2006

History Of Violence

I just watched History of Violence last night--remember, I have kids, so don't blame me if I'm just getting around to it. I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. First, I had no idea what it was about; in fact, I didn't even read the jacket summary, just popped it in the player and let it rip.

** Spoiler Alert **

It starts with a pair of psychopathic killers checking out of a motel by eliminating the entire staff, thus relieving themselves of financial liability. Then we pan to a fine, upstanding, well-adjusted family in the Midwest, doing really swell together; as in, "Gee Wally, mom and dad sure are groovy." At this point I was certain that the killers would roll into town and terrorize family and friends for two hours before finally being taken down before the credits roll. No sir. The hero Tom, known only as Vigo by all my romance writing friends, a heretofore modern Ward Cleaver, takes care of these two assholes with eerily efficient dispatch.

Ok, now what? And that's just it, there is plenty more, and still more twists. Safe to say, I had no idea what was going to happen next. I thought I did a few times, but the story kept bending away from expectation.

One thing I will say, William Hurt did not deserve an Oscar nomination for his role. He was good, but he was no Joe Peschi in Goodfellas.

Oh, and I saw The Forty Year Old Virgin too. What a refreshing comedy it was too. It was typical in some aspects--the whole friends giving bad relationship advice thing--but the story didn't stay focused on those aspects for too long, where other movies of it's type make such inanities the central plot. The actors were fresh and hilarious, and the banter between the players was combative and tense, but with underlying affection. A lot of fun, if not a little too long.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

What I Was Thinking

I've been doing some reading on John Hughes, researching what might have happened to the characters of the Breakfast Club on Monday. My idea was to create a blog, which I did, called shermerhigh.blogspot.com, and create accounts for each of the characters--Claire, Andrew, Brian, John and Allison; and even Carl the Janitor and Principal Vernon--then go back in time before the detention and have each relate their personal high school and family experiences, then the events leading to the Saturday detention, reactions Saturday night and/or Sunday, then start into Monday. I watched the movie and took notes on every small detail, such as the names of various teachers mentioned such as the guidance counselor, a Mr. Clark and a Mr. Tierney (with a history of slight mental illness), etc.

Then I read two interviews with John Hughes, who grew up in Shermerville, which was recently renamed to Northbrook, which is the actual location of the high school used in the movie, as well as in Weird Science and a few others I think. He explained that due to community expansion and big business muscling out small farms, farm communities became what he called bedroom communities, where the local kids became outnumbered by the rich kids. John Bender was one such kid.

It struck me then that as much as I relate to Bender, he doesn't belong to me. John Hughes created him and only he truly knows where he is bound. Hughes wrote and produced a movie called Reach the Rock, which got a critical and popular thumbs down, about a man who is blamed for his friends' death, who leaves town and comes back years later and raises hell. Not very uplifting. Hughes comments that the protagonist is as if John Bender had stayed with Claire after Breakfast Club and never moved on. I guess Vernon knew what he was talking about when he said, "Look John Bender up in five years and see how funny he is then."

The original version of the Breakfast Club was two and a half hours, but the studio made him cut it to ninety minutes. Not only that, but the studio destroyed all the negatives, leaving Hughes with the only copy of the original movie. Can you say, "Director's cut?"

At any rate, I'm moving on. The idea of the blog came from reading The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. It had a short run on blogspot, but it became quite famous after being written up on Slashdot. The blog was written from the perspective of Darth Vader throughout episodes 4 through 6, better known as the original trilogy. It was pure genius and a wonderfully entertaining read. You can find it now if you are interested. But this feels different somehow, because his was a joke and mine would be more of a serious effort, which would simply be plagiarism. And that is a very bad word indeed for someone who hopes to create.

So here's hoping I can create characters so meaningful, if only to a cult few.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Wow!

I am blown away by the outpouring of stories that you all have contributed. Thank you so much for taking the time. I hope to tell you soon what it is I have in mind, but to do so now would be speaking out of turn, and possibly a jinx, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Here's another question for anyone who is interested. What are some of the nicknames given to friends or acquaintances of yours, and how was that nicknamed earned? For instance, in a small town where I once lived, a very large and simple boy named Dan was called Dandroid. A girl in the same town was attached the Moniker Handjobala, another Easy Edith. I'm especially interested in nicknames that have been given in reverence or respect. One of the big guys in my school was called Hoss--not original by any stretch. Another big fella I knew was called Yank. That one could go either way, but this was in Houston, and he was apparently from the north, and nobody messed with him.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Do tell!

Tell me about your high school experience. Were you part of the "in" crowd, or did you walk the line in between, not attracting the attention of anyone, not cool, not an outcast? Or were you picked on unmercifully? Were you a bully? Or bullied? Were you ever unjustly accused of stunts pulled by another classmate? Have you ever taken the rap for another, a friend or enemy? Tell me about really embarassing moments.

Do share, and please encourage your blog friends to come by and do the same. This is all leading somewhere. I hope. If I have the courage to do it.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Thanks, and Keep It Coming

Thanks all for the ideas. I agree that Claire wouldn’t suddenly be destitute and strapped with a deadbeat husband. I’ll try to come up with another game plan for tomorrow’s post. Hughes doesn’t think there is any reason whatsoever for all the characters to end up in the same room again, but the day they spent together, regardless of how their nascent friendships did or didn’t fall apart the following Monday, altered the paths of their lives. That day was important to all of them, and a reunion would be possible if it were sought after, even if only by one of them. Consensus points to Brian as the facilitator of that meeting. The fact that everyone assumes Brian is rich and successful makes me want to go in the other direction with him. I also had the idea while rinsing the shampoo out of my hair that Claire could find Bender working on a construction site, and he could represent himself as a successful architect, citing all the buildings that he has designed. But the reality is that he is a carpenter barely making ends meet. His rebellious attitude is well intact and holding one job for more than a month is a challenge for him.

Toast votes that it end with them finally together in the library. Bender could pull a joint from behind his ear and lift an eyebrow. I’d like to integrate Carl the Janitor too, and the principal too. Perhaps the principal could find them at the end, invading the library, not saying a word either, but taking it all in with dawning comprehension.

Keep any ideas you may have coming. I don’t know why this movie means so much to me, but I sometimes feel physical pain when I think about it. I always felt I could have been one of those actors, could have turned in an emotionally stirring performance, but certainly no better than the ones given. High school was a series of rejections, humiliating moments. To be in the same room with the equivalent people from my past with the same results would have been my personal nirvana. The same can be said for the masses that love this movie as I do. As a writer, I hope to have one, just one story that captures gives the release to the raw angst that this story does.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

I Can Do This

Ok, how about this...

Claire didn't have the courage to stand up to her friends in school. John walked away from the Saturday detention on a cloud, but come Sunday, doubt started to trickle in. By Monday morning he knows it won't work, but refuses to give up. Claire tries to avoid everyone, including her friends, but her entourage still surrounds her as Bender makes his way towards her in the halls.

Pan out to the future. Claire doesn't have any children contrary to what I had postulated before. She is living the life of someone who has made the wrong choices--all of them. Age has faded her looks, and her eyes are tired and dull. Her husband is a useless drunk who refuses to get a job. He watches football and spouts on about the big game and the winning pass he threw. Claire nods and finishes his sentence for him. She's heard it a thousand times. She comes across her senior yearbook and thumbs through it. She see's a picture of Bender and lightly runs her fingers over it. A tear runs down her face.

She goes online and looks up her high school on Classmates.com, but Bender's name isn't there. Of course, she thinks, why would he put himself on Classmates? Ah, but Brian. There he is. She starts to write him an email. "Hey baby," comes the surly voice of her husband, "how's about getting me another beer!" She rolls her eyes and brings down the browser.

Eventually she does send an email to Brian, who is glad to hear from her, and they get together to have lunch. But she is unable to pay, and Brian notices little things about her that have changed. She's no longer the rich girl, and life has humbled her beyond what is comfortable for him to see.

"Have you seen, you know, the others?" Claire says.

He looks away. "No. You saw to that, didn't you?"

This scene would start from glad-to-see-you-again to you-blew-it-you-bitch. Big argument. Brian is pissed at her, she cries and leaves with her face buried in her hands.

Then it could shift to Brian, who feels bad that he lost his cool. He's done alright for himself, happily married to a woman he ironically met at Niagra falls. If you don't get the irony just ask, or watch the movie again. He gets it in his head that he wants to get the group together, but he doesn't know where anyone is. He'll find Bender last, as he is the most important in my mind, the one who can save Claire. He'll seek out Andrew to help him.

This is just a beginning, but I am thinking that each of them is missing something from their lives that the other can fulfill. They pass each other on city streets and don't see one another as the story switches from character to character. Only at the end do they finally meet in one spot, where they all fall together, hugging and crying. We draw the curtain, and feel for certain, that this time they will do it right.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

The Breakfast Club

In 1985 I was a year away from dropping out of college, drunk almost nightly, trying to forget where I was from and where I was soon to return. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew who I didn’t want to be. Tied by an invisible tether to my father, a man who would divorce and marry still another time, gambling on a better future at the expense of the time, destined to repeat—and to be alone with his memories of a wasted past.

With this as my backdrop, movies were my escape. Movies and books. A hero always knew what to do, always said the right thing at the right time. It was kind of depressing now that I think about it, living up to an impossible ideal. The teen movies of the time were all about sexual immortals to whom intercourse was a simple matter of choosing who, but never a question of if. For me it was more like if ever.

Then along came John Hughes, the writer, director and producer of The Breakfast Club. He had already brought us Vacation and Sixteen Candles at the time, and would continue with other brilliant films such as Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but The Breakfast Club in my humble opinion was his best work.

He brings together five entirely different stereotypes of high school students in a Saturday detention at the school library—the rich and popular girl, the jock, the outcast, the pot-smoking rebel, and the bookworm. Only the jock and the princess run with the same crowd at school, but social boundaries cannot withstand the deluge of commonality.

Each of them is challenged by one another, until layer after layer is peeled back to expose a frightened and vulnerable person who is afraid to stand alone. Each is tortured by the hopes and dreams—and apathy—of their parents. In the end they are bonded, as if the intensity of the day had melted all social constraint, leaving them stuck together like a smoking mound of cooling lava. We are left with a glimmer of hope as Claire gives Bender one of her earrings as a token of her commitment to the future.

That’s where the fairy tale ends, and well it probably should. John Hughes has been approached for a sequel, but he declines:

"I know everybody would love to watch it. But I'm too fond of those characters," Hughes said. "I thought about it. I could do it in prose. I know what will happen to them. I know them. But to do it with real actors - with Molly and Judd and Ally - they'd never come back together again. There's no excuse that could ever put them in the same room ever again. There isn't anything in their lives after high school relevant to that day...It's like Ferris Bueller. You don't want to see him today. You'd hate him. He'd either be a bum or a politician."


So that is the question: What happens to the characters on Monday? The logical conclusion in my mind is that things eventually return to what they were before. One day won’t erase a lifetime of programming. The outcasts had nothing to lose, but eventually they will succumb. Claire will try to avoid John in the halls, but John Bender will press the issue with her, to the point where Andrew will step in on her behalf. Actually, this changes things a little, because I can envision the two becoming friends again. I don’t see Claire ever coming around. Brian, the brain, will say hi in the halls, but when met with tepid responses from Claire and Andrew, will wilt back into his place. How do you find common ground for all these disparate characters? We know that they all suffer from oppressive parenting, but what else could draw them together that would be strong enough to overcome the pressures of their peers?

The sequel I think would have to take place far into the future, after Claire has a couple children with a frustrated ex-jock who can’t make ends meet, after Brian has leveraged his education into a lucrative career, perhaps as a CEO of an internet company that IPOed for huge money, after Andrew’s knee finally did blow out in college leaving him with nothing but a bad drug habit and imagined enemies. Ally Sheedy though, she grew up nicely. She really was a transformed beauty after the movie, and regardless of whether or not she was accepted for her transformation, she was truly transformed inside. She gained confidence and became an actress of school plays, and eventually joined a comedy troupe. Later in life she finds Andrew and finds that both of them have changed places in life. Bender realizes after high school that he has nothing, and will amount to nothing. He has it out with his father, and realizes he has to leave the house on his own. At this moment he realizes the futility of his situation and digs in deep and finds strength. He takes a job as a mechanic, the only skill that he has. He crosses paths with Brian, who commissions him to build a custom car for him.

How do they come together, all of them? I don’t know yet. But let me pose that question to you, my dear readers. Give me your take on the future. How can we put them back together in a believable fashion? I want to propose to Mr. Hughes that there is a way.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Believe

Moni made an interesting comment in regards to my last post. Here's an excerpt:

Frankly, I like a man to act like a man. When I first met my exhusband he was a "work boots and flannel shirt" kind of guy. The kind that wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Now, he's turned into a metrosexual, wearing the bracelets and rings and cologne. He dresses to the tee. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just the whole thing of being true to yourself.

Maybe it's my fault for wanting him to dress a little better, but I think I created a monster.

The man of yesterday wouldn't have changed his dress or lifestyle to adapt to anyone's image of a man. A man knows who he is. It's not your fault Moni that he changed. People by nature are always exerting their will on others to conform to their ideal mate/friend, all the while hoping to fail, albeit unconsciously. How many women really want to see a man on a first date crying at the end of Millon Dollar Baby? Uh, I'm just going to get some popcorn. We want what we can't have, and apparently what we don't want.

I'm just as guilty as anyone. There is such a thing as healthy compromise, but cleaning our slates for the sake of pleasing another is pure disaster, and is the reason family law is so lucrative.

Remember, be strong, hold on. Believe.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Iron John

As is my wont, I was chatting with the local librarian about my son’s aversion to scary movies, so she pointed me to the fairy tales section. Fairy tales are perfect for boys from five to seven. It helps them to address their fears.

On my journey to learning the craft of writing, I’ve encountered Joseph Campbell who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell talks at length about the symbolism of ancient stories and fables, of religious ceremony and rites of passage. There is ubiquity across cultures of certain themes, an eerie sameness to the stories of gods that have never met—virgin birth for instance. Stories that harness the power of symbolism reach into the murky depths of our imagination and manipulate emotions we do not understand.

A common male theme is to be taken from the mother, leaving home to be raised to manhood by another male who is not the father. You see this all the time. Look no further than Star Wars for an example. To be a real man in some instances involves the actual slaying of the father.

Two nights ago I read to Jackson one of the books I brought home that day called Iron John. A savage, wild man, is caught and caged by the King. The King’s son loses a golden ball into the cage, and asks the man to give it back. The man, who introduces himself as Iron John, agrees on the condition that the boy release him. The boy says he does not have the key, but Iron John tells him to find the key under his mother’s pillow. The boy does as he is told and unlocks the cage, but on the condition that Iron John take him along, as the boy’s father would surely kill him for his deed.

Iron John raises the boy to manhood. And the story goes on.

The poet Robert Bly wrote a famous book (but I have never heard of it) called Iron John: A Book about Men. Apparently this book caused quite a ripple in the feminist community, for reasons that are too haughty for me to understand. Bly asserts that this ancient fable, older than the Bible, contains lessons that are meaningful for men. One conclusion, and I have read this even with Joseph Campbell, is that our society has taken important ceremony away from our young boys that helped us make that tough transition to manhood.

For now, I tend to agree, because there is something missing from our lives. I’m not sure that men even exist anymore really. The strong man of the past suddenly became Archie Bunker, and because of a flaw in the fabric the whole garment was tossed. It’s gauche anymore to stand up for the male condition—because that would be anti-feminist? Our whole society has become weak, afraid to say what is clearly in front of our faces. A man has instincts, desires that are built in. Do we act on all of them? Of course not. But should we be ashamed and hide because they exist? See my last answer. It’s time for a whole lot more honesty people. I don’t just mean speaking it. Let’s also hear it without rancor.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Two Sketches

More in the AM, but just in case you stop by before I get back, here are my first two sketches, copied, but not traced, from pictures I found in a how-to book on cartooning. I'm not perfect, but I do like these a lot:

Sketching

I’ve taken advantage of my son’s burgeoning interest in drawing to buy a book on cartooning, and surprised myself this weekend by drawing a horse with a disneyesque smile. I also draw a little cartoon moppet. I’ll dust off the scanner and show them to you later, but I was quite pleased with myself.

I have to cut it short today. My wife called me home Friday afternoon because she was sick, and stayed in bed almost for the entire weekend. Work is going well but I feel a psychological deadline coming soon. The boss here wants me to go full time, and as soon as it comes out that I wish to remain a contractor, I fear some of my responsibility will be taken from me. I want to be farther along when that happens.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Bright Future

My wife and I have decided not to fight it anymore, because therein lay the problem. Ken Keyes, one of two authors that helped transition me from an angst-ridden teenager to a semi-actualized man, famously wrote that we can’t control the world around us, but we can control how we react to it. My wife has reached that conclusion on her own; a method of enlightenment ten times the power of the third hand variety.

What am I talking about? Get ready to groan people. When our baby needs us, we are going to be there, no questions asked. We just lost our patience. But thinking back, whenever Jackson cried we went to him, sometimes sitting up for hours. Contrary to popular belief though, children aren’t static little units; they grow, adjust and change. Eriksson postulated that a child has to fully experience each cycle of life to healthily move on to the next. This is a phase, and this too shall pass.

Now my wife is talking about having another, maybe a little girl this time—as if the house needed another boss. Sure, it’s a lot of work now, but the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Who Dies First?

Jackson asked me last night, “Who’s going to die first daddy, me or Emmett?”

“You two are only a couple years apart, so I call it a dead heat.”

“What’s a ‘dead heat’?”

“It means that it’s so close it doesn’t matter.”

“I think I’ll die first because Emmett is younger than me.”

“Well… If you take care of yourself, eat healthy, stay away from drugs and alcohol, you’ll have much better odds of living longer.”

“What are ‘drugs’?”

“Drugs are what people take to make themselves feel really good for a very short amount of time, which makes them want more and more until someday it kills them.”

“It kills them?”

“It can. Many teenagers today die from drug overdose, which means taking too much.”

Jackson thought about this for a moment. “Do you drink alcohol?”

“Sometimes, but only the occasional beer or a glass of wine.”

“Will it make you die?”

“It’s not good for me I guess, but it won’t kill me.”

“I think you are going to die before momma.”

I screwed my face up in mock shock, and he laughed. “That’s why we have life insurance.”

“What’s ‘life insurance’?”

How did this conversation get started anyway?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Terrible Twos

Having kids is great, but today I’m going to complain. I’m reluctant to do so, much for the same reasons that our president, at least in my estimation, is reluctant to admit to a mistake—it feeds the opposition like water to the cracked, dry earth.

Our two year old, Emmett, has officially crossed over to his terrible two’s, a cliché I know, but as for every well-worn expression, the origin can be traced to a powerful source. He won’t sleep anymore, not unless mommy or daddy gets in bed with him. We are trying to hold out, but sitting in a rocker next to his bed is like riding coach as an annoying flight attendant rams your lolling head with the drink cart. After an hour of faking sleep and checking to see if his eyes were closed using the barely-open-eye-slit method, I gave up and hopped into bed with him.

I turned over with my back to him, and he complained until I rolled over to face him. I was quite frustrated, now looking him in the eyes, nose to nose. He smiled and stroked my cheek and said, “Thanks daddy.” This is where I will resist the urge wax poetic on parenthood. You don’t need to ask do you? I’m a sucker.

Mommy swapped places with me at three. This morning she could barely talk on the phone, as signs of weariness and frustration were setting in. She feels like a bad mother, for being too tired to take the kids anywhere. Ironic, isn’t it?

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Screw Loose

For a mere one hundred twenty five dollars, I learned a little about electronics, namely about relay switches, fifteen vs. thirty amp breakers, and signal detection. I also learned that I was a hair breadth short of doing it right in the first place.

One screw. I was one screw short of putting it back together correctly. I tried to put it back in but it wouldn’t bite, and what the hell anyway; the thermostat was secured to the wall with two others so why worry? Try: because the heat won’t turn on. It turns out that the screw not only held it together, but also completed the circuit.

Anyway, the electricians cost an hour minimum, so I had them install the rest of our thermostats. I thought about having them empty the dishwasher with fifteen minutes left on the clock. Instead, we chatted about the Academy Awards.

I told the electrician, the only reason you are here is because I've got a screw loose. My wife overheard me and took me aside. "How many times have I told you? You just shouldn't talk."

Monday, March 06, 2006

Themophobia

It was another of those home improvement weekends, when once again I thought I could cheat the system. I was only partially successful. This weekend I strapped on the electricians hat and removed the living room thermostat, and tried to replace it with another more modern and programmable. And like so many times before I called dad to bail me out.

My wife is results oriented, not unlike a light switch, either on or off, good job or bad. Success is gauged not based on effort. Her philosophy is that of Mr. Miyagi. You either install a thermostat yes, or you install a thermostat no. You install a thermostat guess so—squash, just like grape. Oh sure, she told me to start in another, less important room. But what can I say? I’m a cowboy at heart. This morning, huddled under a blanket in our ice cold living room, you can guess what kind of chilly send-off to work I received--a three-word portent: call the electrician.

Our house may just be the Millennium Falcon of homes, cobbled together with flotsam and jetsam—it may need a rap on the dashboard, but the hyper-drive technically functions. If I'd have started in another room, my confidence would have tacked in the red. Our bedroom room was a snap, a typical four wire configuration that transcribed perfectly from the instruction manual. But our living room was another story, a total mystery. The wires that once completed the installation of the old thermostat had a much lighter gauge, in other words, much thinner, and so I assumed to be of substantially less voltage. I mustered the courage to touch them, and didn’t feel a shock. Have I killed it? That’s for the electrician to say now, but I have a few theories. If I were living alone I would test them out, but with my wife looking over my shoulder, failure is not an option.

Oh well. I was going to tell you about my weekend of playing Pokemon with Jackson. That will be tomorrow’s subject. Let’s just say that I had an epiphany. My parenting style might not be perfect, but I do get in the primordial ooze and sling mud. That has to count for something.

Jackson called me this morning on my way to work.

“Hey daddy, Trapinch just evolved!”

“What is he now?”

“He’s a … Mommy what does this say? A Vibrava!”

“Cool, one step closer to Flygon.”

“Yeah. We’re totally going to beat Wallace now! Do you wanna talk to momma?”

“Does momma want to talk to daddy?”

He asked the muffled question. “No she doesn’t. Ooops, wait, she changed her mind.”

She never stays mad for long.

Friday, March 03, 2006

I'm Buggin'

I call them stink bugs, but now I don’t know why. They’re harmless and take residence in all my window panes, and I’ve become accustomed to opening the screen and giving them a flick like a child’s paper football, aiming for a spot and celebrating a successful field goal.

With the coming of the New England winter, these and other bugs take refuge where they can find warmth. We have a ladybug hut were resides a small colony that will be released in the spring, but stink bugs get the Roman thumbs down when momma finds them, and thus the executioner, ie moi, gives them a painless ham-fisted death, and a fast pass to the septic tank.

Brushing my teeth a week ago, a stink bug crawled from underneath our toiletry basket to say hi. Alone a bug has my sympathy; in hoards I call the exterminator. I thought briefly about squashing him and getting it over with. I threw one outside a month ago and haven’t slept soundly since—it’s freakin’ cold out there, and he had a drop of gasoline’s chance in a furnace of surviving. So I scooped him up and let him crawl on the back of my hand, and took him to a corner of the house that gave him the least chance of detection. By the next morning, he was back under the basket.

Then my wife spotted him and pronounced sentence. “Ok,” I said, “just give me a minute.” She waited patiently, tapping her foot. “Don’t worry, I’ll get to it. Go on now.” So she left, and I picked him up and started for that far corner once again.

“Daddy, aren’t you going to kill it?” Jackson asked. Both my boys were taking a bath, and my oldest was peering up at me.

“I’m going to hide it in the other room.”

“Can I see it?”

My youngest son Emmett agreed, “See bug!”

I put the stink bug under their noses, which caused Jackson to crash back into the tub wall as if I had Jedi powers, and he readily came to his mother’s point of view. And so it came to pass that a little mole revealed my deception.

“So you’ve been hiding the bug in your office have you?” My wife had that look on her face, that half amused expression she gets when I’ve done something clumsy.

“I’m gonna kill that kid!” I said facetiously.

But our little stink bug was given a pass, and my wife tacitly agreed to ignore him until the summer. I only prayed that he wasn’t a she.

Yesterday morning I felt a little crunch under my bare foot as I stepped out of the shower. He was a tough little dude, not quite dead as his antennae seemed to conduct the orchestra of his last rites. I covered him with a couple squares of toilet paper and finished the job. May he rest in peace.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Romancing India

Just a quick note because I have some proving work to do today. It gladdens my heart to see that we are aligning with the second most populous nation in the world (by my count anyway). If India has our back, I won't feel so nervous about an emerging China.

Was that quick enough?

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

A Better System

Eve has inspired me to clean my desk this morning. What I call a mess however is what Eve would consider classified per the Dewey Decimal System. You should check out her desk.

I am going to update my links soon, so for all those newbies who have been visiting lately, stay tuned.

Much work to do and snow accumulation on the way. Will chaos on Iraq take hold? Some people in India actually like us. China chooses their words to America carefully over Taiwan. Bush needs to explain himself to the people, but don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Politicians are posturing over the Dubai port deal.

There needs to be a better system. Suggestions?