Dave tagged me with a meme that I think is rather original. “The rules are to pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more, find page 123, find the first five sentences, post the next three sentences, and then tag five people.”

I reached down and found Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, which I recently finished.

A single bit of sediment coiling in the jar on some slow hydraulic axis. He tipped the jar and drank and he drank slowly but still he drank nearly the whole jar. He sat there with his stomach bloated.

I won’t tag others, but if you feel inspired to join, feel free to play along. Just be sure to trackback to this post so we know that you’ve participated.

I take a lot of enjoyment from looking at home exteriors decorated for Christmas. I love the tasteful string of lights as well as the garish lawn covered with inflatable Santas and reindeer. But one decoration has grown in popularity in recent years that has left me scratching my head. Our popular celebration of Christmas has adopted the North Pole and all things Arctic even if they have nothing to do with first century Palestine. Fair enough. I present to you these exhibits from my neighborhood:

Exhibit A. Notice that this exterior is covered with all sorts of Arctic symbolism. Two Santa Clauses, reindeer (inflatable and illuminated), inflatable carousel, etc. Notice, however, the decoration in the upper right hand corner of the picture.

A penguin wearing a Santa hat.

Exhibit B.

More penguins. Wearing more Santa hats.

What gives? Penguins are Antarctic animals, not Arctic. Perhaps one could say that these decorations aren’t confusing the Earth’s poles, but I doubt it. To support my claim, I present to you Exhibit C.

A penguin on an igloo. In cased you missed it, I’ll repeat myself. A penguin. On an igloo.

There are no igloos near the South Pole because no indigenous people live there. Nor are there any penguins near where the Eskimos have ever lived. Ridiculous. I hope Santa brings a lot of people atlases for Christmas.

I recently ran across Virtual Parks, a cool website where users have uploaded interactive 360 degree panoramas from different national and state parks, mostly in California. Here are some of my favorites:

Mt. Whitney summit.
Yosemite Falls.
Guitar Lake (on the western side of Mt. Whitney).

I don’t usually remember my dreams, but for the past three nights they’ve been very vivid.

Dream 1: Three nights ago I dreamt that I was in a play and during the intermission, I searched frantically for a script but could not find it—I either forgot all my lines for the second act or never learned them in the first place. I then thought maybe I would remember my lines when the other actors went on stage. Intermission finished, but nothing happened. Then we backstage got a call from the director in the house telling me to go onto the stage. Apparently my character started the second act. I went out and ad-libbed a long monologue that the audience enjoyed greatly, but when I left the stage, everyone backstage looked at me with equal amounts of anger and contempt—they thought of me as a fraud.

Dream 2: Two nights ago I had three different dreams, about which I don’t remember much except for the fact that in each dream I lost my front left tooth. I hate dreams where I lose my teeth. I usually wake up in a panic and feel the tooth in question over and over again for assurance. From my days as a psychology major in college, I remember that losing-teeth dreams are common, but I don’t remember the common interpretation for them.

Dream 3: Last night I dreamt that I was going to a birthday party for a friend—I don’t remember who—with Niels Bohr. I woke up remembering the name Niels Bohr from my chemistry classes in high school and college, but I couldn’t remember his research and whether he was still alive, though I had my doubts he was still living. This morning I looked at the Wikipedia entry for Bohr. When was the last time I thought of Bohr or even heard his name?

Anyway, have fun with these dreams and if you feel industrious, you can take a stab at interpreting them.

In Richard Russo’s novel, Empire Falls two of the characters share a pastime finding what they call “Empire Moments”—moments of unintentional humor coming from typos in the newspaper and misspellings or double entendres on signs. One such example is a sign that reads, “No trespassing without permission.”

This weekend, I had a couple of Empire Moments. I spent the weekend at my parents’ home in Clovis. Before leaving town, I stopped to buy some gasoline and a drink. On the counter, there was a display holding CDs of a compilation of country artists seeking to raise funds for US troops overseas. The display read, “Support our troops. Support their sacrifice.” The second sentence struck me as a bit macabre, though I understand their genuinely good intentions. The second Empire Moment came while in Clovis. There is a mailbox/shipping store a few miles from my parents’ home with the name “Goin’ Postal.” I have never wanted to step in that store, at least not without a body suit of kevlar.

This is the fortune from a cookie I just ate:

Ignore previous cookie.

Seriously. How awesome is that?

Erika Haub is kicking your butt, and you don’t even know it.

She is a fantastic blogger with lots of great earthy-spiritual insight. Check out these posts for a sampling:

1. Good enough.


2. One more.


3. Does Sunday morning really matter?

Check out the site, Dylan Hears a Who, for a great Bob Dylan meets Dr. Suess mash. I’ve been listening to Dylan for over ten years and I was fooled by the quality of the impersonation and music. On closer listening, the music clearly mimics Highway 61 Revisited. But it’s fun, creative, and really enjoyable.

(HT: Rob)

It’s Oscar season. Last night I watched Martin Scorsese’s latest brilliant film The Departed and I thought, he should definitely win this year. I haven’t seen The Queen or Babel, but of the three best picture nominees I have seen (Letters From Iwo Jima and Little Miss Sunshine being the other two), The Departed is by far the most engrossing and consistently good film. Anyway, I thought, in my blog world, it’s time to set the Oscar world to rights. With no authority, I shall become a fanboy and tell you what I think are the great Oscar mistakes and how they should be corrected. It’s odd because lately, the Oscars and most awards have become less important to me. It’s not as if my tastes are validated simply because a film won awards. It’s become evident in recent years that winning Oscars is more about good campaigns than good films. You don’t have to care about these things, and probably shouldn’t, but these are the fun posts that we can debate without anything really mattering.

My first suggestion would be to get rid of the best director and best picture split. How can a film win or even be nominated for best picture without the best direction? For example, in 2001 Moulin Rouge! was nominated for best picture but its director Baz Lurman was not recognized for his part in the film. Who made the movie? Best picture should include the director with the producers. While we’re at it, let’s create best ensemble acting as well. That way films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy can be recognized for all the solid performances.

The second suggestion might be cliche and obvious, but it needs to be said. It’s a travesty that Citizen Kane only won one Oscar (best original screenplay). I say let’s give it the sweep it deserves and hand over the other seven Oscars for which it was nominated—especially best picture, director, and actor (the latter two were obviously Orson Wells). Gary Cooper was good in Sergent York, but Wells’ acting doesn’t feel a bit dated.

In one of my favorite comics from Gary Larson’s The Far Side, we can see inside a bee hive. There are police bees and a detective bee looking at holes in the bottom of the hive clearly made by rocks. The detective bee says something to the extent of, “Wait, someone must have been throwing rocks from the inside!” We can also see a young boy stuffed inside the bee hive. The caption at the bottom of the strip reads:

Artist: G. Larson
Medium: Ink and Paper
Title: It was Late, I was Tired

Without further ado, I present to you a version of It was Late and We were Tired, I have titled, “The Gladiators Circa 2000.” We took these photographs when a couple college roommates and I had some pictures at the end of a film roll to kill. I was behind the camera. I’ll keep my roommates’ identities a secret.