Why George... Why?

Dear George Lucas:

First you went as far as to have Greedo shoot first. Not cool.

Then you destroyed your core fanbase's hopes for three ultra-kickin' new chapters of the best sci-fi movie series ever by including a talking amphibian that makes flatulence jokes.

You went on to make the most overly-gaudy, CGI-heavy movie with Attack of the Clowns....

Developed some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard in the Revenge of the Sith. "Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo; so long ago when there was nothing but our love. No politics, no plotting, no war." C'mon, man.... Yuck.

Oh, I see.... you couldn't leave well enough alone. You had to go and make an animated movie. Of the Clone Wars? Again.. C'mon, dude....

At least if you were going to make an animated movie, set it between Sith and A New Hope so that Vader could be in it.

You suck George. You couldn't leave the ships dingy, dirty, and battle-scarred. You had to give them a CGI sheen. You wouldn't work with someone elses' novelization of what proved to be an awesome triology in "Heir to the Empire" and turn those into movies...

You had to turn Indiana Jones into a story about aliens. Finding Atlantis just wasn't good enough, huh?

Instead you decide to give us more garbage.

The Clone Wars --- as a computer animated movie? We put so much faith in your storytelling and your ability to fascinate us with space battles on a limited budget. Now you go and do this?

Well, I'm through with your garbage. As much of a mark as you made on my generation's fascination with sci-fi and my childhood toy collection, I will never undertand why you did this to us.

Why George, why?

Sincerely,

Disgusted in South Carolina

Turning Up the Radio

I've got a habit, call it bad, call it good, call it what you will, that my wife can't stand.

I like to listen to loud music in the car -- not just loud, really loud. I have to make sure that after I get done driving her car alone that I turn the volume back down to zero, or she is not a happy camper after she gets in the car.

Other than with my wife, I've only ever gotten in trouble for my loud music was one time in high school at an after- football-game-gathering at the local baptist church when some friends and I were in my car listening to probably something like Guns -n- Roses, at full blast, and a police officer came over to me and told me to turn it down.

My other bad habit when I drive is speeding... which is something I try not to do when people are in the car with me. I've gotten into my share of trouble with that over the years. But that's not really relevant to this post.

Recently, after running across the video for Cinderella's "Shake Me", from their Night Songs album, on YouTube, I've gotten back into my 80s metal music. So much that I've burned myself three CDs worth of my favorite metal songs from the 80s and early 90s and have had them on constant rotation in the car for the last month or so, at full blast.

They range from the aforementioned Cinderella song, to RATT, Great White, Lita Ford, Ozzy, Winger (hey Kip's actually a pretty good singer and Reb plays some kick-ass guitar), Firehouse, Guns, the Crue, Quiet Riot, Firehouse, and Fiona, to name a few.

I don't know what it is about this genre of music for me, but everytime I go awhile between periods of listening to it, I fall in love with it even more.It's like a fine wine - it just gets better with age. The screaming guitar riffs, the high-pitched vocals.... it just takes me back.

Metal took a lot of hits and crap throughout the 90s and early 2000s. They took Headbanger's Ball away.... Van Halen couldn't keep a lead singer; Axl went nuts (although he made an awesome comeback on Sebastian's latest CD "Angel Down"); Jani Lane and Vince Neil both got fat; Brett Michaels became a judge on Nashville Star... WTF?

Thankfully, metal and 80s style hard rock are making a comeback in a big way. In the last year, White Lion, Dokken, Whitesnake, Sebastian Bach, Night Ranger, Loverboy, the Crue, Asia, Def Leppard, Journey, Foreigner, and a host of others, have released screaming hot new CDs.

A little off track again... getting back to the main story here....

So I had to make a late-night Wal-Mart run tonight about 10:30. I popped one of my new homemade discs in, cranked the radio, and, since it was nice outside, rolled the window down. I was jamming the whole way to Wally World.

As I was about to make the turn from Wade Hampton Boulevard to go into the parking lot of our local Nasty Mart, I turned the music down to about a quarter of the way up on the volume dial. I was still having a good time jamming to the music as I hunted down a parking spot. Pulled in, listened to the remaining 30 seconds of the song, shut the radio off, rolled up the windows, powered down the car, and got out.

Then this dude unlocking the door of the car next to me says, "Hey, was that Danger Danger?"

I just started laughing.

"Uh.... yeah," I just sort of said, dumbfounded. Danger Danger was one of those metal bands that hit kind of late (their first album was released in 1989) and had to try to stay above water while grunge and alternative took over the airwaves. They're one of the lesser known metal bands, but still absolutely awesome. They're supposed to be releasing a new album this year.

"I haven't heard 'Bang, Bang' in years. Thanks man. The little bit I heard was a trip," he replies, laughing.

We chatted for a few minutes about the genre, who are favorites are, how its making a comeback. It was a really fun, 10-minute conversation.

There's a metal concert series each summer called Rocklahoma. They just had the 2008 concert. It's a week-long event. There were a ton of rockin' metal bands that just played there. I'd love to go to the 2009 concert. Doubt that will happen though --- but in the meantime, I'll just keep my metal CDs in rotation and the volume turned up.

No, I Don't Want Corn In My Gas Tank

My wife and I were returning from Charlotte to visit my folks a few nights ago and about 30 miles from home noticed we had dropped down below a quarter of a tank of gas. I don't like to run the cars that low, so I took the next exit.

$3.77. Looks good to me. Pulled in and drove to the pump - but before I got out I noticed the sticker. Contains up to 15% ethanol. So we went on to the station next door. Contains up to 10% ethanol. Next station please. Contains up to 15% ethanol.

I'm not going to the Citgo next door. Citgo is owned by the national oil company of Venezuela. I am not about to put any of my money in Hugo Chavez's hands. He's one of the silent partners in the Axis of Evil.

Went down to the next exit -- and, ironically at a restaurant that I used to frequent while working at a job site during a summer job between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college, found a gas station that was selling non-ethanol blend gas. For the same exact price as the first station I had gone to.

I made the decision awhile ago to not put ethanol in my gas tank - in either car.

This is getting more and more difficult to do as more and more gas stations around here are starting to sell ethanol-blend gas. One of the biggest offenders is Stewart Spinks, also a silent partner in the AoE.

A good friend of ours is a service tech at the local Saturn dealership. He's told me some interesting stories about problems that more and more of their customers are running into after putting ethanol-blend gas in their tanks. We haven't had to have any major vehicle repairs in several years now. And I don't want to start by screwing up my fuel system.

If you look around on the Internet, you can find all kinds of interesting discussions about this.

The ethanol industry doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that there are valid concerns the vehicle owners have and are running into because of their own ignorance about ethanol.

• The Problem With Ethanol - Tampa Bay Online

Some facts about ethanol (you can decide for yourself whether each is a pro or con):

• Ethanol burns cleaner and reduces the amount of toxic emissions.
• Ethanol production is providing an economic boom for corn-farmers in the midwest
  
• Per gallon, ethanol produces 34 percent less energy than a gallon of gasoline and thus reduces your mileage. So you may not necessarily be getting more bang for you buck by purchasing ethanol-blend gas.
• To distill ethanol takes a 3:1 ratio of water to ethanol. It is very water intensive. A lot of states are facing severe drought and need to conserve the water that they currently have.
  
• Ethanol attracts water. When it mixes with water, ethanol separates from the gas and settles to the bottom of the tank with the water.
• Ethanol is corrosive. It eats through fiberglass. This is one reason boaters are having increasing problems with ethanol-blend fuel. There is currently a class-action suit in California against nine major oil companies (Ethanol-Blended Fuel Blamed for Boaters' Problems - ConsumerAffairs.com) because of this.
• Some manufacturers will void your vehicle's warranty if ethanol blends higher than 10 percent are used in its fuel system.
  
• In older model cars, ethanol will eat through rubber components in the fuel system and can loosen fuel tanks.
• More pros and cons..... and more
  

Flex-fuel vehicles are designed to run on up to 85 percent ethanol-15 percent gas and don't have a problem taking the E-10(10 percent mix) or E15(15 percent mix) that the stations I was trying to get gas at on our trip home sell. But flex fuel vehicles are relatively new and not all vehicle models are available as flex-fuel. FFVs really didn't take off until 2003 and after. And neither of our vehicles are FFVs.

• Check here to see if you have a flex fuel vehicle

My two favorite gas stations, Ingles Supermarket (based in Black Mountain, NC) and Murphy Gas (owned by Wal-Mart), do not sell ethanol-blend fuel. This is why unless I am not near one at the time I need to gas my car, I always go to one of the two. And they consistently have the lowest gas prices in this area.

So as long as I have a car with an engine that burns gasoline (whether a fully gasoline engine or a hybrid), I am going to frequent the gas stations without ethanol-based gas. I just wish that they would advertise in big-bold letters on their primary roadside price signs whether their fuel is ethanol-blend so I don't have to waste my time pulling up to the pump to find out.

I'm kind of torn on the The Open Fuel Standard Act proposed this week by Sam Brownback (R-KS), Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). It would require that, starting in 2012, 50 percent of all new vehicles be flex fuel and able to burn gasoline, ethanol and methanol, or biodiesel. By 2015, that requirement would go up to 80 percent. Yes, it does help get us away from our dependency on oil, whether foreign or domestic. But that still doesn't address the main issue we're facing by having non-renewable fuel sources still on the market as an option to make our cars move down the road.

Honestly though I think we need to direct our primary efforts toward hydrogen and/or 100 percent elctric vehicles. I think ethanol is basically the go-between from where we are right now to where we could and should be in the near future. And it pisses me off -- not only that I can't go to the pump and find the type of gas that I want every time, but that the companies selling this crap are snowing people with it.

I could go on and on about what's wrong with the energy policies in this country and what we could and should do to make things better for the environment and our own pocketbooks, but that's a post for another time. I could go on and on about blaming this person or that person, or the people who insist on driving gas-sucking SUVs and minivans (are these really necessary? -- is the status quo in the PTA just that important to you? This gets back to analogy of your friends jumping off a bridge...) For the record, I will never purchase an SUV or a minivan.

And I could go on and on about our government's lack of initiative in adequately addressing the issues. It's taken $4 a gallon gas for people to jump up and take notice.

To his credit, and although probably motivated by his own selfishness, oilman George W. Bush lifted the federal moratorium on offshore drilling last week that his dad put in place. Now we just have to wait and see if our liberally-lopsided Congress will allow drilling on the outer continental shelf. Not that that is really going to solve anything at this moment in time, but within the next decade it should provide us some valuable benefits. I don't think any Congress is going to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and I think that's a good thing. But with Bush's last minute drive to actually do something about our dependency on foreign oil, I think that's a step in the right direction. He may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think this may help redeem his image.

McCain and Obama are at least putting in some effort required so that they can advertise that they each have an energy plan. I think McCain's Lexington Project is better and more realistic, but he's still an idiot. And I'm going to vote for the guy because I do not want a democrat in office along with a democratic congress. That would be really, really bad.

My father and I tend to diverge (not drastically, but enough to provide for some interesting discussions) on a lot of political issues. But we're pretty much both on the same page on our opinion of T. Boone Pickens' plan for foreign oil and U.S. energy consumption and policies. So if you're up for a good read, check out FoxNews' article today on Pickens' plan or my dad's series on energy policies over at his blog.

I'll probably follow up with more on this later.

Adventures in Vocabulary

In the last three days, I've just happened to stumble into conversations that have resulted in new vocabulary being produced.

Situations like that are fun. They stimulate your thought process.

As a baby, our vocabulary fun comes from trying to replicate the sounds coming out of the mouth of the red-headed guy looming you going , "Say DADDY!"; as a teen it's found coming up with new slang.

Then you become an adult and you just have these random conversations that are really about nothing, but the result of which does make you ponder further things, laugh about them, and then end up blogging about them.

1. Evolution of perception

Some of us were talking at work about how things change as you get older, go through life in the real-world workforce, and deal with adult issues. A co-worker involved in this conversation summed it up with the following, "It's weird. I find myself not giving a crap about things that I really used to when I was younger; and now I'm giving a crap about totally new, more mature things that I never thought would be a big deal to me." At this point another coworker walks by (he hadn't really been actively involved in the conversation, but I guess he was listening to most of it) and says, "It's called evolution of perception. Get used to it."

2. The Bubble Corollary

People live in bubbles. They socialize in bubbles. They establish bubbles no matter where they go, whether they like it or not. Sometimes we don't like to step out of our bubble. With some issues, we refuse to go outside the bubble. We often let the bubble cloud our judgment. Sometimes the bubble moves from the church classroom to the pool. This is called "The Bubble Corollary" This was the discussion we had last night during a gathering of friends from church at a pool party that lasted past midnight. This leads directly into the establishment of the third upcoming phrase.

3. Pruning point

The "Pruning Point", we established last night, is the point when your entire body has been in the water so long that it feels like your skin has become so wrinkled that it will never snap back into shape. But, at the same time, you don't want to get out of the water because you're either having too much fun or because the water is really warm and you don't want to freeze your ass off getting out. It kind of went down like this --- said party was advertised to start at 5. We got there about 6:15. The guys hovered around the man-food table (chips, salsa, pigs-in-a-blanket, brownies) and the girls hovered around the woman-food table (cheese dip, crackers and vegetables) until around 7. Then came pool-time. Mostly just floating or lounging around in the water, chatting, chicken fighting, and five or six rounds of cannonball contests up until around midnight. Then the brakes started to come on after people started realizing they had hit their pruning point and started to depart. Five plus hours of being in the pool will do that.

Think Bathing a Baby Is Fun? Try A Cat

Ever tried to bathe a cat? It's not a whole lot of fun. For anyone involved.

We have three cats -- two that are eleven, both of which are long-haired (one tortoise shell calico - Dorry; one black persian- Dexter); and one tuxedo-colored short-haired (Mittens, who I affectionately call Demon) that we took in as a stray last year around Thanksgiving.

The two older cats are declawed; the new one isn't. So we trim her nails. She puts up a helluva fight when we do -- so during the first few times, we got scraped up a good bit. But she's calmed down lately. We don't have to worry as much about putting battle armor on when we cut her nails anymore.

But we think Dorry is picking up some of Demon's bad habits.

Dexter and Demon are pretty good about keeping themselves up. Dorry never has been. I think she has some mental issues. She's always been kinda weird. She gets mats in her hair a lot. And she likes to hang out in the litter a lot. She would literally just sit there all day long if she could.

So anyway, getting to the point of the story here... It was time yesterday for the cats to be combed.

Dexter doesn't like it, but he took it like a man.

Dorry fought tooth and nail the entire way. She's never fought us like she did yesterday. I came away with a pretty interesting cat bite and my wife with some pretty bad scrapes on her arm. Eventually we wrapped her legs in a towel and did our best to comb her. The whole time I was combing her, I realized she just stunk. I mean, she just smelled really bad.

We decided while she was already in a bad mood that she was going to get a bath. This is always fun. I don't know what other people have to go through when they bathe their cat(s). Most people think that we're crazy that we bathe our cats when we tell them about it anyway. But Dorry does not like to take a bath at all.

Getting her into the water usually involves carrying her into the bathroom in such a way that she doesn't see the water until she's standing in it. We've tried walking her face first toward the tub before and she freaks out. She will kick, scream, and wail like you wouldn't believe.

Once she got into the water she just kept on wailing. She looks up with this expression as if she's saying "Why have you brought this upon me?" and just continues to wail. You try and put some shampoo on her and she squirms and wails the entire time. When you rinse her, she squirms and wails the entire time.

Eventually, she accepts her fate. But this usually takes about 10 minutes. So we eventually managed -- and she got through it fine.

The funniest thing though was when I flipped the drain switch and the water started to drain. She heard the water start to go down and watched it slowly get lower and lower and she tried to bolt right from the tub to avoid getting sucked down. In the end, there was a tub full of residual bubbles with this cat that looked like a water-logged rat standing in the middle.

She has so much fur that when she's dry she looks 2-3 times her actual size. She's really a skinny cat; you don't really know it until she's wet. We toweled her off as best as we could and tried to get her to stay in one place with a towel, but she refused to sit down. She went back to the door to the room where the litter is and just stared at the door. I was not about to let her in there to go sit down in the litter and get it all through her fur. I knew that's what her plan was.

Four hours later, the dry, clean cat was allowed access to her litter. I guarantee you she'll be reeking of it in just a few days.

Nestled in the Eaves

A few weeks ago, I noticed some miscellaneous weeds and twigs stuffed in the eaves above our porch. Over the weeks, the pile grew and grew.

We had ourselves a bird's nest.

My wife and I kept wondering -- Should we let a bird do that above our porch? How safe a location is that for a bird? Why did a bird pick that, of all locations, to build a nest? Should we get rid of it?

I decided to leave it be. I figured if a bird really wants to live above our porch, fine. Just as long as it doesn't poop on me.

This past weekend we heard the first microchirps. As my wife works for a state agency that gets the week of July 4th off, she's been home all week long listening to the chirps. She's called me up at work a time or two, saying "They're chirping again."

They're birds -- that's what birds do.

I saw the little muchkins for the first time yesterday. There are at least four of them, but only three at the most want to stick their heads up at any one time. I'm not sure what type of birds they are --- the mother is never really around long enough or visible enough for me to tell.

Baby birds are not the most attractive creatures on Earth. I tried taking some pictures of them. Most of the photos turned out kinda blurry - the camera doesn't like being that close to them.

The images I ended up with made the birds look like either the famous hoax profile of the Loch Ness monster, or some sort of demonic gray blob with a beak and mohawk.

I never realized that baby birds have as much hair as they do. It's kinda freaky.

I came in the house and told my wife about them, showed her the photos, and told her their names are Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Clyde. She promptly told me that I'm weird.

So we've been doing some reading up on birds. Apparently they will start trying to leave the nest and fly away in about two weeks. So until then, I guess we'll keep an eye out for them.