A few photos… (I take ’em, gotta share ’em.)

It’s easy to bleed when you’re cutting edge…

I’m thinking about switching from Blogger to their “Blogger Beta” version. They say it’s all sorts of nifty, with new features, yadda yadda yadda… But I’m a bit fearful of losing my archives, and I’m rather attached to my template (mainly because I’m not technically-savvy enough to feel confident in remaking it all). Has anyone switched? Did it work? Was it worth the pain? Were you able to keep all your old stuff but still use the new features?

One bug in Blogger that really bothers me is that you can’t have a space in the filename of any photo you upload. I hope they fix that soon…

You want to GO to the movies? Oh…

I read in The Week just a few minutes ago that the movie industry is getting a bit worried about all the people NOT going to movie theaters and watching their movies. They had all sorts of reasons, but they mainly talked about how people are more comfortable renting movies and watching them at home. They said something like, “thirty percent of people say they have the ultimate theater experience in their living room.” Well, I’m in the seventy percent that still has a regular old low-definition TV, but I still don’t go to the movies.

It’s not that I don’t like movies – I think some of the cartoons are great. It’s not that I don’t like putting my clothes on and schlepping across town in the rain to watch flickering images in a cave. The reason I don’t go to movies is that it simply costs too much. I can’t afford it. Dagmar and I go out once in a while and see a nice film (the last one we saw was Hitchhiker’s Guide, I think), and it always costs two to three times what it would cost us to rent THREE movies, make our own very good popcorn, and sit on our comfy couch where we can nuzzle each other when we feel like it. If the theaters want to increase their business, quit charging six bucks for two handfuls of popcorn and give the patrons value for their money.

Drippy Old Gents

I just had a few Jehova’s Witnesses on my porch. Nice gentlemen, standing in the rain with their suits on, waving pamphlets at me. I don’t think they were expecting a long-haired, bearded hippie wearing a robe and sandals to answer the door… I wanted to tell them that this was the wrong neighborhood to be canvassing on a Saturday morning – most of my neighbors don’t seem to be the sort of people who are awake and alert on Saturday mornings – but I figured they could probably tell that already.

I’m not interested in having religion foisted upon me by strangers who interrupt my one morning to sleep in (or ramble on in this blog), but you know, it really doesn’t cost anything to be polite. So I listened to them. They were polite to me, too, and gave me a couple pamphlets to read. As they turned to leave, it struck me that these two elderly gentlemen are much braver than ANY of our elected officials. I’ve never, ever had a politician knock on my door – they avoid this neighborhood like the plague. I wonder if I’ll be as polite to a politician knocking on my door as I was to the two guys in ties a few minutes ago.

It Kinda Scares Me

I work in a print shop. Thus far the Republicans have “outprinted” the Democrats roughly ten to one (that’s just what I’ve seen come across my desk). The company I work for has printed a TON of stuff for the Republicans – and here’s the interesting part – all but one item was part of a smear campaign. The Republicans have printed just one positive piece.

In contrast, we’ve only printed a handful of postcards and brochures for the Democrats, but not a single one of them even mentioned their competition – they were all positive “here’s what I stand for” pieces. Kudos to the Dems for standing tall, and boos and hisses for the Republicans for relying on negative campaigning.

‘Tis only a midterm election, I know, but I still haven’t seen more than a handful of Democratic yard signs. I’ve seen quite a few Republican signs, notably for congressman Steve King and gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. The problem with their signs is twofold – they tend to put up HUGE, expensive-looking signs in very pretty areas, thus ruining the scenery, and in my opinion neither of them is fit to govern. King wants the US government to give him (and I mean him, personally) over $2 million per mile to build a fence between Mexico and the U.S. Nussle backed a law making it more difficult for elderly and poor voters to cast their vote. Nice guy.

I much prefer the political stands taken by Joyce Schulte and Chet Culver. I haven’t heard much from either campaign, though. I hope they’re taking the high road and running clean campaigns. Too bad we can’t hope the same for their competition.

Time to Start the Weekend

It’s my nephew Hunter’s birthday today (he’s the very intelligent-looking chap pictured to the left). We’re going to go visit him soon. They’re having a big party for the guy – his entire class is invited! We’re looking forward to going and being old fuddy-duddies.

My cousin is getting married this weekend somewhere in the Southwest. I’ve been thinking a lot about him, wishing him well (we can’t make it to the wedding). But I have to admit I’m thinking much more about his parents, my aunt and uncle. They’ve both been fighting cancer; he just Thursday had brain surgery. My thoughts are going out to you guys – we’ve been praying a lot lately. I’m sure I’ll spend a fair amount of time this weekend wondering how everything’s going…

The Packers are playing the Lions tomorrow. I’m hoping that one of the teams will actually be good enough to win the game… I’m still hoping the Packers can pull out a winning season for veteran quarterback Brett Favre. It may be a vain hope, though – they’re a pretty young team.

In any case, it’s time to go cook some potatoes for breakfast, scrub my hairy carcass clean and start the weekend!