Conservative Corner (my brother, Dan)
Unashamed
(my brother, Scott)
Crazy Aunt Purl
(my friend Laurie)
There's Pie In the Lunchroom
(my friend Chuck)
Too Fat For Ponies
(my friend Sam)
Nashville Junk
(a Tennessean insider)
Recent posts:
2006
March 16-24, 2006
March 6-10, 2006
Feb. 27 - March 3, 2006
Feb. 20-24, 2006
Feb. 13-17, 2006
Feb. 6-9, 2006
Jan 30-Feb 2, 2006
Jan 23-27, 2006
Jan 16-20, 2006
Jan 3-11, 2006
2005
Dec 27-30, 2005
Dec 19-22, 2005
Dec 8-16, 2005
Dec 1-7, 2005
March 24, 2006
I saw the photos of the Britney Spears statue at Defamer.com. It's an interesting take on the pro-life sentiment. The life-size statute depicts an "idealized" version of the birth of Britney's son Sean. If you look at the photos, what you'll see is a naked Spears on all fours clutching the head of a bearskin rug.
When I first heard about the photos on the radio, the hosts made snarky comments on the position she is in, saying that wasn't how you give birth. This just demonstrates the ignornace of certain radio hosts. In actuality, should the mother choose a drug-free childbirth, there are many positions she can take to both ease the pain and encourage the baby to enter the birth canal. It just so happens that "all fours" is one of them.
That being said, the drug-free option was not the one Britney chose. She told Elle magazine, she'd prefer to have a C-section, and if that wasn't an option, "I'll be like, 'Epidural, please!' ... I don't want to go through the pain."
Both of these options require the mother to be flat on her back and immobile. So, I guess that's what the artist meant when he said this was an "idealized" depiction. Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Pop-Star's Pregnancy Idealized in Brooklyn 'Monument to Pro-Life'
BROOKLYN, NY (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a 'first' for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the "ideal" model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn's Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.
Dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Spears' baby boy, Sean, and applauds her decision of placing family before career. "A superstar at Britney's young age having a child is rare in today's celebrity culture. This dedication honors Britney for the rarity of her choice and bravery of her decision," said gallery co-director, Lincoln Capla. The dedication includes materials provided by Manhattan Right To Life Committee.
Okay then.
Back in 2002 a Chinese company called Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. attempted to buy an American telecommunications company called Global Crossing. The deal was blocked by Congress because the company had too cozy a relationship with the government of China.
Fast forward to 2006. In the midst of the Global War on Terror, Bush is outsourcing port security in the Bahamas to Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd. HW will be in charge of scanning cargo coming into the states via the Bahamas for illicit nuclear materials. There will be no American oversite and no American customs agents will be involved.
My question is this: If HW shouldn't have had control over phone lines in the states, why are we entrusting our national security to them?
There is a situation in Afghanistan that is intolerable. The religious leaders and the courts have decided to execute a man for converting to Christianity from Islam. Abdur Rahman is currently in jail in Kabul. Outside, the mullahs are screaming for his blood.
The Islamic leaders are demanding that the courts execute Rahman and if they don't, he will be dragged from the jail and torn to pieces until there is nothing left.
Our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan to prop up a government that will allow this to happen? Condi Rice said she spoke to Afghani President Hamid Karzai and that she felt there may be a solution. But the high court in Afghanistan has issued a statement saying that the decision is theirs to make, not the president's.
This is the same government that jailed an Afghani journalist for writing that converting to Christianity from Islam shouldn't carry the death penalty. She got two years in prison for blasphemy.
It is hard to believe that here we are in the 21st century and people are still being executed for their religious beliefs. One telling comment came from a mullah on the scene. He said (at least the translation I heard said) that they cannot allow Rahman to flea to the west because if he gets away with it, too many Afghanis will claim to be Christian so they can live in the west. Keeping your congregation through fear and intimidation will not strengthen your religion. At least it shouldn't.
There is not getting around it. Our president has no respect for either the Congress or the Constitution he has sworn twice (on the Bible) to uphold. The Boston Globe has a story about how President Bush signed the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in a big White House ceremony. After everyone left, he issued another infamous signing statement which says in essense that he doesn't feel bound by the oversight provisions in the law.
Now you law-and-order conservative types out there explain this to me. How can the president simply ignore the laws he doesn't like and still be president?
In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."
What kills me is that some 37 percent of the American public still supports this menace of a president.
Well, Ben Domenech's star rose and fell in the span of a few days. Ben is a 24-year-old conservative blogger who co-founded redstate.org. He has worked as an editor with Regenery Press and an employee in the Bush White House.
The Washington Post hired him to write a daily conservative blog. When it was announced, the lefty blogs started rending their garments and gnashing their teeth because they knew what the Washington Post didn't, that Ben has written some horrible screeds at redstate.org, that he is a partisan hack and not a real conservative and he's a plagarist.
Bloggers found several instances in which Ben lifted whole sections of other people's work and published it under his own name. Now, the Post should never have hired him without checking him out. I mean if a bunch of lefty bloggers can use Google, why can't WaPo, right?
Classy to the end, Ben finished up his mea culpa on redstate.org with the following line:
To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America.
What a pinhead.
Well here's a candidate for father of the year. A man in Tulsa leaves his 3-year-old in the car while he goes into a strip club. It's 45 degrees outside and raining, but the kid manages to wander into the club anyway. The kid told the cops that his dad told him to stay in the car and if he got out "monsters would eat him."
I'm finally going to be able to see Dollie's production of "Pirates of Penzance" tonight. Have a good weekend.
March 23, 2006
The article in which Max was interviewed about his role in "The Music Man" came out yesterday. Here is the relevent portion:
"It was cool," added sixth-grader Chelsey Hall, who acted in the "Alma Hix" role.
Second-grader Maxwell Reed agreed.
"We rocked," said Maxwell, who portrayed, "Winthrop," the boy character who couldn't pronounce his S's. He managed the part despite having to repeat words like scrumptious and sister. "I never want to do this play again."
What's funny about that is that Dollie appeared in "The Music Man" twice and also said "I never want to do this play again."
What's up with Kansas? They are currently hashing out the legality of a law which prohibits, among other things, heavy petting for those 16 and under. Not only that, but the law requires people to report any attempts by teens 16 and under to obtain contraception.
They must have solved all their other problems if this is what's made it to the top of the priority list.
I read a post yesterday which struck a chord with me. The author suggested that the anti-abortion movement was inspired not so much by a desire to stop the murder of unborn babies, but to punish women for having sex.
That may be an oversimplification of the case, but there were some valid points in the argument. No one I've asked about it can explain what punishment should be given to a woman who seeks an abortion. There is always talk of "responsibility" and "consequences" but not punishment.
If abortion is murder and there is no difference between a fetus and a child, then if a woman has an abortion, she must be tried for pre-meditated murder. So must her doctor. If her husband or friends knew about it ahead of time, then they're accessories.
Here's a hypothetical. Suppose a contractor makes a mistake when wiring a building. The mistake causes a fire and 14 people die as a result. Does that contractor get charged with negiligent homicide? Now what if the fire occured in a fertility clinic and resulted in the loss of 500 embryos. Is that mass murder?
Or to approach it from another angle: if you can force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, then why can we not force people to give up organs, blood or bone marrow to save the lives of dying people in need? Would you be in favor of passing a law requiring everyone of age to give blood every few weeks? By demanding that a woman carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, the state is effectively co-opting her uterus. What's the difference between that and forcing someone to give up a kidney to save someone's life? If your answer is that the woman bears responsibility for the pregnancy, then your stance on abortion isn't about saving lives. It's about punishing irresponsible behavior.
As far as the abortion issue goes I have a compromise: I'll give you conservatives the abortion issue. We'll make all abortions illegal. In exchange, I want proper sex education in the schools and open access to contraception (including over-the-counter emergency contraception) for anyone who wants it.
I also want to get rid of stupid laws like the one recently upheld by the courts in Mississippi which ban the sale, display, possession and mentioning out loud of sex toys (did I say "sex toys" I meant "three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genitalia"). Or the one in Kansas which bans funding contraception in county clinics as well as referring those patients seeking contraception to other programs (like Planned Parenthood) who will provide it. I mean if the county doesn't want to pay for the pill, fine. But why is it anyone's business if a health care worker mentions to a woman where she can get the pill?.
More and more it's becoming clear that the pro-life movement isn't so much about saving lives as it is about punishing women for having sex.
Disgraced Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham's ill-gotten booty went up for auction today. You can see for yourself what a fistfull of bribery cash will buy you.
RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman is sending out fundraising emails saying that if the Dems take back the congress, they're going to impeach Bush.
March 22, 2006
When Max was smaller, we used to have a saying around the house. "Little boy loving hurts." That's because Max would always squeeze as hard as he could while hugging your neck. He like to hit me, the way dads and sons do. Nothing serious, but he liked to tussle.
Little boy loving hurts.
Rozzy really likes my new haircut. She likes to feel my head and run her hands around it very fast. She discovered this last night as I was lifting her out of her car seat. We went out for dinner and Rozzy announced that she needed to go to the bathroom. I picked her up to take her and she quickly made for my head to feel my hair.
In her hurry, she missed and jammed her thumb in my eye. ow. Ow. OW.
After I told Dollie what happened, she said "Litle girl loving hurts." She's right.
There are some places where programs such as "Pay for Performance" makes sense. CEOs of big corporations, for example. Society would benefit from having their pay tied to performance. But in Florida, the lege passed a law setting up a P4P program for public school teachers.
The program would link raises and bonuses for teachers to the scores their pupils make on standardized tests. This is a bad idea and one I'm surprised came out of the Republican Florida legislature.
It wasn't too long ago when the Republicans were screaming that federalizing standardized testing would lead to teachers teaching the test, rather than providing a good education. It seems to me that linking teacher pay to performance on the test might have the same effect.
The argument from the right always seems to come back to running public schools like a business. Let the competition of the free market fix our schools. The idea is that private and charter schools can provide parents with a choice and the public schools will benefit from having to compete for students.
But let's look at that a little more closely. Yes, the free market provides private and public companies with incentives to innovate and become more efficient, but the pay of the executives is rarely linked to the performance of the company. In fact, many CEOs set up pay structures that completely de-link their bonuses and stock options from the performance of the company.
Here in Tennessee, with health care costs skyrocketing, the largest provider of health insurance actually borrowed money to pay for the CEO's bonus package. Who do you think will pay for that?
Secondly, public schools are not a for-profit entity, so running them like a business won't work. A public school must take all comers and for free. You don't have the advantage of weeding out the troublemakers, the intellectually incurious or the lazy. You must try to teach them all. If the number of students doubles during a five-year period (like it has in my county), then you have to make room for them. You can't say "sorry, we're full, go to the next county."
In my county, the commissioners are considering a multi-million dollar rennovation of two high schools that have been in service for more than 30 years. The members of the budget committee seem truly angry that they have to spend so much money on schools. But they're the ones okaying all these subdivisions that are bringing in new families. Either the growth of the county must be curtailed or you have to spend money fixing up the schools. We have an obligation to teach the children.
Finally, teachers work very hard. The hours are long, the pay is lousy and in the end, they get very little respect from students, parents or legislators. They are, by and large, a cynical group who are tired of having their livelihood disrupted by experimental legislation year after year.
Ask any public school teacher in Tennessee who has more than 10 years experience how far up Gov. Lamar Alexander's career ladder he or she got before they eliminated the program. It's always something.
Then there's Pat Robertson. He got ahold of a copy of David Horowitz's book that lists the 100 most dangerous academics in America. The book purports to name liberal professors who are spreading their bad ideology to today's youth.
Pat took it a step further on the "700 Club" yesterday:
"...these guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, you know some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order and they don't want anybody else except them."
This coming from the man who called for the assasination of the Venezuelan president. This from the man who partnered with Charles Taylor, one of the most brutal dictators in Africa to share mining profits. Sheesh.
In his press conference yesterday, Bush said it would be up to future presidents to decide when all the troops will be leaving Iraq. I guess he's planning on us being there for another three years at least.
A new poll shows that nearly half of all Americans favor legalizing marijuana.
North Korea announced that they have first strike capability against the U.S. and that "Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States." Gee, thanks President Bush for setting such a great example for the world.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican church, has joined the Pope in coming out against teaching creationism in public school science classes.
His argument is an interesting one and it will be fun to see if it takes hold in this country. The Archbishop says that the Bible should be held above the fray. Putting creationism next to the theory of evolution lessens the Bible in that it puts Biblical teachings on the same level as scientific theory. Faith should not be challenged in the same way that scientific theory must be.
"My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."
late update:
I forgot to mention that Max had a great week last week. He went a full week without any bad notes home from the teacher. As a motivational tool, the teacher had been hosting "behavior parties" on Friday for those who managed to be good all week.
Max has never attended one. Eventually, she stopped doing it, but in Max's honor, she held one more so he could attend. That was a very sweet gesture on her part.
Now, because Max kept up his end, I have to make good on a couple of promises. I have to take him to Chuck E. Cheese. And I have to explain what a "purple nurple" is.
So, I sat Max down and explained about the purple nurple. Max, who has been waiting for this knowlege for months, if not years, sat there and nodded as I went through all the reasons why it's not a good idea to give someone a purple nurple. Then I told him what it was.
"Oh," he said. That's it.
As it turns out, one of Dollie's students had already told him what it was. Only Max didn't believe him. With as much of a build up as his mother and I gave it, he figured it was something much more dastardly, I guess.
March 21, 2006
I found this cool job with great pay and lots of benefits. There are great benefits: full health care coverage, $165K a year, a generous retirement package and the opportunity to spend lots of time at home.
You get a week off for St. Patrick's Day, two weeks in April, a week in May, a week in July and all of August. That job is member of the House of Representatives.
In fact, this congress has been in session fewer days than the "do-nothing Congress" that Harry Truman railed against. In January and February, they spent a total of 47 hours in session.
That's a sweet gig.
The Journal of Research into Personality published the results of a 20-year study in which 95 children were tracked beginning at daycare and continuing through early adulthood. What they found made me laugh.
The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.
Heh. There are, of course, flaws in the study and the professor who did the work doesn't claim that his survey can be extrapolated to a national population. It's just a funny little story that makes me laugh.
Stephen Colbert has inked a 7-figure book deal.
As for my notion to shave my head, I appreciate the feedback I've received. I'm probably going to do it, but it's going to have to wait for a little while. No sooner did I cut off all my hair then the weather turned chilly.
This morning, the weather chick was talking about snow tonight. Sure, it was in that teaser/bumber way you only get on local newscasts:
"Will there be snow in our future? Tonight's forecast at 10."
I doubt we'll see any snow, but I get cold now just walking down the hall at work.
I looked at a few sites which offer advice for people who shave their heads. One company offers a moisturizer specifically for bald heads. It comes in either a shiny or matte finish. That's one more decision I'll have to make, I guess.
My car needs an oil change. In a world where you can pull into a station and have it done in ten minutes, one would think that it wouldn't be that much of a hassle. But it is. After I turn in my keys and sit down with my phone to read the paper, some grease-stained sod will come in holding some filter or part and say "You need a new one. We have them for $14.95, you want us to replace it?" Two minutes later he's back with something else. Suddenly, my $20 oil change turns into $70.
I was watching an episode of "Free Ride" on Fox and the opening scene showed the main character's dad looking under the hood of the kid's car. He was stuck on the side of the road at night.
"When was the last time you put oil in the car?"
"Oh, they did that at the factory," the kid said.
"No, I mean when was the last time YOU put oil in the car?"
"I don't follow you."
"When did you get your oil changed?"
"I don't understand"
"You mean you've been driving this car for two years and never changed the oil?"
"I didn't know!"
"You're an idiot."
I've been there. I'm inept when it comes to auto maintenance. I leave it to professionals. I have a neighbor who is great with cars. He has a yard full of heaps that he fixes and sells. Recently, he told me he bought a 1998 Toyota Turcell for $150 because it wouldn't start.
He put new tires on it and checked under the hood. He found a brand new battery and a brand new starter. He started feeling around under there and figured out that the starter wasn't actually hooked up to the engine. He plugged it in and it started right up. He sold the car the next day for $1,000.
If it were mine, I'd have been the guy who sold it to him for $150.
March 20, 2006
Max was interviewed about his experiences in "The Music Man" for the local paper. He said the reporter asked him how the show went and would he like to do it again. His answers: "We rocked" and "No." He also thanked his mother for helping him with his lines. Smart lad.
Last week, Max had a near perfect behavior report. His only mark came because of his parents. We forgot to sign his agenda on Friday, so he got an "R" for responsibility. Regardless, the teacher let Max attend the Friday behavior party -- a first. Also, it seems that the teacher had stopped having the behavior parties for the kids, but had just one more so Max could attend one. That's great.
His last performance of "The Music Man" went well. Two of his grandmas were there. The principal told Max afterwards that he'd done a great job and that he was proud of him. Max shrugged it off. He doesn't take compliments well.
Dollie's show opened on Friday and she's heard nothing but good things about it. I look forward to seeing it myself. She always puts a lot of work into her productions and "Pirates of Penzance"was no different. She sewed 14 garments and altered no telling how many others. She devoted her Saturdays to set construction and her weeknights to rehearsals and sewing. Now that the show has opened, she can take a breath before she starts contemplating the next one.
Max is on Spring Break for two weeks. Dollie starts her Spring Break next week. I miss working for the university just for the holidays out of nowhere.
Midseason television is upon us and I watched a few new programs. "The Loop" is a new sitcom on Fox. The premise is a young airline executive (Sam) who lives with a bunch of college friends and his brother. He's the one responsible member of the bunch and has to balance the pressures of work with the peer pressures of play.
The main reason I watched it was because the actor playing the lead, Brett Harrison, used to play the dorky neighbor kid on "Grounded for Life" which was a very funny show. "The Loop" has its moments. Mimi Rogers is great and the crotchety old actor who plays the crotchety old boss, Phillip Baker Hall, is fun. He's probably best known as the library cop from that episode of "Seinfeld" where Jerry lost the Tropic of Cancer.
The first two episodes have been a little formulaic. Sam is given a huge assignment, but he can't work on it because his friends are dragging him to the bars and he's a sucker for peer pressure. In the end, he pulls it out by coming up with something off the top of his head.
It could get better. But I don't think it's going to get the chance.
"Doctor Who" premiered on Sci-Fi over the weekend. I've never seen any of the classic series nor the films, so I went into this with fresh eyes and no preconceptions. I liked it. It's good old-fashioned British cookiness wrapped in a science fiction skin. I look forward to more.
"The New Adventures of Old Christine" is Julia-Louie Dreyfuss' new project. She plays Christine, a divorced mom who's husband takes up with a much younger woman also named Christine. The highlight for me is the pair of blonde moms from the kid's private school. They speak in cryptic messages and pass their judgements on everything Christine does. It's funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny. Next.
More premiers this week. I'll keep watching so you don't have to.
I read where Katherine Harris has decided not only to stay in the race for Senate, but to finance it with her $10 million inheritance her father left her when he died two months back. She's losing in the polls by a 2-1 margin and, until now, was way behind in fundraising.
Her entire future now rests on this senate race. I wonder how her family feels about that?
The White House is taking a couple of Secret Service agents to the woodshed for impersonating Fox News journalists.
The Washington Post quoted RNC Chair Ken Mehlman as saying something I find utterly ridiculous.
"If you are someone who favors small government," Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said, "you're going to have a clear choice between someone who has cut taxes every year in office, who believes you ought to own your own health care . . . and who plans to cut the deficit over five years versus people who have consistently supported more spending, have opposed tax cuts and who oppose patients owning their own health care. The question is, who's on your side for reducing the size of government?"
Now, those of you out there who pay attention to these things understand why I was taken aback. Under Bush the size of the federal government has grown. He created new beauracracies. Spending has gone through the roof. The deficit has ballooned. The government under Bush and the Republicans is bigger now than it has been in generations.
Oh, but he "plans" to cut the deficit over the next five years. I would remind Mr. Mehlman that when Bush took office there was no deficit to cut. The fact that we're experiencing the largest deficits in our history can be placed fully at the feet of the Republican Party and Bush. So who is on the side of reducing the size of government?
Having blown the port deal, Dubai has now set it's sites on American weapons manufacturers.
I'm considering shaving my head. I go through this phase ever so often. I bought some clippers and had Dollie buzz my scalp. But I haven't actually shaved it yet. I think I may hold off for a little while. I need to give myself and everyone around me time to process it. Plus, it turned rather cold around here lately and I'm feeling it in my skull.
One thing that cutting all my hair off has done is to highlight just how much grey I have.
"You are so grey," Dollie said as she mowed my folicles.
"I blame the kids," I replied.
"Oh yeah, no doubt."
The reaction from my coworkers has been positive. In fact, the only negative news came from Badger who said it "wasn't a good look." He wanted me to keep the hair and lose the beard because it would make me look younger.
"But that will always be the case," I said. "I can always cut the beard later and look younger."
At 37, married with two kids, I don't feel the need to look younger. Thinner, sure, but not younger.
The main appeal to shaving my head is it will maximize the time between haircuts. I've never liked getting my hair cut (even back when I had hair). So this seems like as good a solution as any.
March 16, 2006
It's been a while. Sorry about that. I've been having to concentrate on writing that I actually get paid to do.
Let me catch you up:
Last Saturday, I had a lot of fun at a HeroClix tournament. Some friends of mine built a 3-D map of Arkham Asylum and populated it with a ton of Batman enemies. There were 24 or so players who each brought a team of two heroes to go into Arkham and put down the riot. My team survived, but didn't actually score any points. The one cell I entered contained two of the biggest, baddest villains around and I was overmatched. So, I beat a hasty retreat and didn't get a chance to engage anyone else.
Regardless, it was a fun time. It seems like I've had a gaming hobby for most of my life. For years (starting in high school and continuing through college and for several years after) it was Dungeons & Dragons.
I never really figured any other game would capture my interest like D&D. In fact, I purposely avoided other games because I had invested so much time and energy into becoming a good D&D player and dungeon master.
Even when my roommates would play other role playing games or miniature games like Warhammer and BattleMech, I watched, but didn't get involved. Not my scene.
Then my buddy Henry gave me a bag full of HeroClix left over from his gaming store and I flipped out. Much to the dismay of my wife, I'd found a new hobby and it involved lots of tiny little plastic superheroes on every horizontal surface. So, I try to keep it isolated in my office and the comic book store.
Last Sunday evening, Rozzy started appearing flush and wanted to lay down on the couch and complain. She said she had a "shark in her belly that was making her hot." It was a warm evening, so I didn't think too much of it until Dollie felt her forehead. I checked her temperature: 103. Uh-oh.
After a dose of Ibuprofen followed by a dose of acetomenophine an hour later, her temp was back down, but she was not doing well. The shark was making her belly all squirty and the results were bright neon green.
Fever plus bright green poo equals rotovirus.
Being the responsible parents we are, we kept her out of daycare the next day. I stayed home with her, took her to see her pediatrician (whom we all love) who confirmed my own suspicians.
So, I put Rozzy to bed and let her watch her DVDs, while I tried to get some work done at home. She was fine all day long. No fever, no more green poo, no complaints about the shark in her belly. She was happy and bouncy right up until bed time. Then she popped a 101-degree fever. Grrrrrrrr.
This fever responded well to the ibuprofen, so we let it go. Incidentally, I've discovered that it is easier to get Rozzy to take her medicine if it is pink. She calls it "princess medicine" and drinks it readily. With Max, I had to play bartender. I'd have to take those litte plastic medicine cups and fill one with the dose and a second with Coca-Cola. He would slam down the first and then the second.
Kids. Can't live with them, can't put them in a bag and leave them by the side of the road.
Tuesday night was Max's opening performance of "The Music Man." Dollie has been in the show twice and seen countless productions. She says that this one, with it's cast of elementary school kids, was her favorite. The kids looked like stunned sheep on stage, but they did an admirable job.
Max plays Winthrop, the role Ronny Howard had in the film. He was very nervous about his solo on "Gary, Indiana." Though he dropped a line, he recovered well and was one of the better singers in the cast. I'd post the video I shot, but technically, it was illegal for me to shoot it, so I'm not going to do that. They put a sign on the door explaining that, due to copywrite, photos and video was not allowed. But when they opened the door to let us in, the sign was blocked and I didn't see it until I had to take Rozzy to the bathroom during the performance.
Max really enjoys singing. He has problems keeping up tempo and his pitch is far from perfect, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm. He told me that each day at lunch he and his buddy Canyon have singing contests and their friends vote on who does the better job.
Recently, Canyon sang "Ring of Fire." Max sang "Rule, Britania" a song he picked up by watching British television.
Meanwhile, Dollie is doing her best to prepare for her show which opens tomorrow. "The Pirates of Penzance" is going to rock. She's put so much work into it and she very nervous that the audience isn't going to appreciate light opera, but she's put in a lot of action, fight scenes, jokes and the like, so I'm sure it's going to be great. She has sewn her fingers to the bone making victorian era nightgowns and dresses for the major general's daughters.
For my part, I've designed the poster and will be finishing up the program tonight. I'm also the designated pack mule, a beast of burden who hauls all the heavy stuff around. That's showbiz.
Lots of things have happend in the political world this week. President Bush's former chief domestic policy advisor Claude Allen who resigned in January "to spend more time with his family" turns out to be a thief. He was caught committing retail fraud at Target. His scam was simple: he would buy something, take it home, bring back the receipt, grab an identical item off the shelf and take it to the return desk to get a credit.
Through his lawyer, Mr. Allen denied the charges, saying there was a mix-up concerning his credit card. Maryland authorities charged Mr. Allen, 45, last Thursday with trying at least 25 times over the last five months to return and collect refunds for goods he never purchased, including a home theater system, clothes and items worth as little as $2.50.
Here's the thing. He has a mental problem. That's the only explanation that makes sense. While at the White House, he made $161,000 a year -- the top-level pay grade. There was no reason to steal $2.50 from Target. I hope he gets the help he needs and stops floating the "evil twin" defense.
Sen. Russ Feingold offered a resolution to censure President Bush over the illegal domestic spying program that continues to take place. On the surface, that seems like a good move. We can't impeach him because the Republicans are the majority. We can't investigate because the intelligence committee says they're not going to. So we censure. Get these so-called moderate Republicans on the record as either supporting Bush or the Constitution.
The problem is that I'm not sure it's a winner for the Democrats. Bush's poll numbers are in free fall. Pilling on like that could rally public support for him and reverse that trend. As much as I'd like to see Bush answer for this, I'm thinking the midterm elections may be the "moment of accountability" we've been waiting for since 9/11.
Hurrah for Jessica Simpson. She's been working with a charity called "Operation Smile" which provides reconstructive surgery to children in developing countries with facial deformities. She's decided to go to D.C. and lobby members of congress on behalf of the charity. Operation Smile is a non-partisan group and Simpson decided to turn down an invitation to appear at an NRCC fundraiser that evening even after being offered some private face time with Bush himself. Heh.
The Republicans are trying to get Bush to bring in some new blood. Nearly every president gets that call when the poll numbers are down. Bring in a seasoned veteran to shake thing up. I wonder if Bush will play along.
If Halliburton is in charge of your health in Iraq. Don't drink the water.
In Missourri, the state lege has voted to ban county health clinics from providing family planning services. This is a direct attack on women's rights. The Republicans in Missourri do not want you to have access to birth control. Unbelievable.
