A Very Scary Idea

I admit Linux is very customizable. But this crosses the line. Some things are not meant to be.

New Fave

Sam Nielsen is my new favourite artist. Here's why. And he is apparently coming out with a book. I've already started saving my shekels....

Summer Rant

My wife has left me for ten days. She is taking her best friend on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate said friend's retirement. So I've been left to do the grocery shopping unaided.

We've let the fridge clear out in anticipation of Sally's trip, so tonight I went to the local Publix in search of bachelor chow. Tonight's dinner will be a simple repast of a french cheese whose name I can not recall and ritz crackers, followed by watermelon for dessert.

While in Publix I discovered something, that for me, provides the key to modern America. You can buy many different brands of instant iced tea mix, but they all have sweetening. Most have sugar, or possibly high fructose corn syrup, some have saccharin, some have nutrasweet, fewer have splenda and one lonely brand had stevia, I think. But you can not buy unsweetened instant tea.

I'm lazy. Boiling water requires work and effort. Pouring water over tea flavoured pellets is far less tiring. I don't much care about the taste as I going to add lemon juice to it anyway, so the better taste of freshly made hot tea isn't an issue.

But do all of our beverages have to be sweet? I drink, in no particular order: Tap water, orange juice, coffee, milk, an occasional lemonade when it is truly hot, and iced tea. If we are having a sit down dinner, I may have beer or wine. Of those beverages, only orange juice and lemonade can be classified as sweet. None of them would be foreign to Americans of fifty years ago.

But what you see in the grocery store is an endless array of sweetened beverages. No wonder we're all fat.

At Least One Thousand

words, that is.




{H/T Boots & Sabers}

If It Only Had Pirates

This would be the perfect horror movie. It has everything else: nazi's, zombies, nazi zombies, cute girls, snow, blood, blood on the snow and a chainsaw.

Caution: Some naughty language in the subtitles.

Glad It's Over

On election night, I decided I wanted to take Sally out to eat. There's an Irish pub semi near us that I've been curious about for some time, so we discussed it and set off to see what it was like. We set off right around 6 pm.

Georgia has a curious law that prohibits the serving of alcohol on election day until after the polls close. The polls close at 7 pm. So the pub was completely deserted when we arrived. The service was very good and our waiter was friendly, competent and unobtrusive. The decor is well thought out.

Our table faced a tv screen which was showing the news. My guess is that the manager thought most patrons would want updates, it being election night and all. However, the polls not having closed, CNN was showing pundits and drivel. After a few moments of inanity, I asked our waiter if the tv could be switched to sports. He told us that he would try, and that he didn't think it would be a problem as we were the only customers.

Shortly after he left, all of the televisions started showing ESPN. Shortly after that, the bartenders, one after another, with a decent interval between, stopped by our table to thank us.

The food at Fados is good. My wife enjoyed the lamb dip sandwich and my steak salad was very tasty. Both were quite rich. We split the bread pudding with brown bread ice cream. It was adequate. The major turnoff for us was parking. Any place where there isn't close, free parking is pretty much off the repeat visit list.

British ID Cards

No2ID has uncovered a policy report prepared by UK government bureaucrats and annotated it a bit. Okay, they have annotated it a lot. While you might think that this is relevant only to Brits, I think it's pretty eye opening as to what officialdom considers to be the real arguments for a national ID.

Samizdata, that blog of wacky English libertarians, has the scoop.

Book Review

I just finished The Dead by Mark E Rogers last night. I haven't been reviewing the books I read, but I thought I'd make an exception in this case.

The Dead is the Tim Lahaye/Jerry Jenkins Apocalypse done by a Catholic in one thin book. As self-published books go, it's fairly well written. It helps that Rogers is an established writer. The book comes with original art that is evocative, but not as good as Rogers' previously published work.

The plot is simple and moderately obvious. Zombies do not scare me, so I didn't find it especially scary. And the characterization is stereotypical. However, the theological discussion is most entertaining if you're currently embroiled in any of the mainstream church controversies. Catholics and Episcopalians will find it particularly relevant. There is one conversation between Father Tim and Father Chuck that I expect will make any revisionist writhe. That it takes place in a tunnel, surrounded by zombies makes it even more gripping.

While I enjoyed reading The Dead, I really wish the author/artist would return to his roots and start writing genre bending parodies again.