Don't Go Vote

Your social media channels are presumably clogged up like 836 in an afternoon rainstorm... though instead of 2004 Honda Civics that don't signal right or left you're lost among political comments that do nothing but signal right or left. Today, it's dominated by one message: "Go vote!"

My sentiment is a bit different. I say Go vote**!

** Unless you are the kind of low-watt bulb that votes based on something like "Which candidate you'd rather have a beer with", which one looks better, for/against "The Hispanic-sounding name", or some other such inanity. 

I'm not just saying "Go vote, unless you're an idiot" (well okay that's actually most of my point). There's a bit more nuance here though.

If you haven't voted until Election Day but always planned to go out today, and you read up a bit --- or ask a friend you know who's really into politics, or even just print out the endorsements from a likeminded organization, then please go vote.

If you have a friend on Facebook who says "Go vote", and your response is "Oh that's right, that's today isn't it?" then do us all a favor and stay the hell home. Vote for America's Next Top Voice Can Dance With The Stars and leave the republic to people who won't go in and Christmas Tree the Scantron.

Updating

"Uhhh yes I'd like to exchange this LeBron Heat jersey for a Dolphins jersey.

Which one? Oh... Is Jason Taylor still on the team? Wait no I heard he might go to the Jets or something."

First Church of Bacon: Confession

Bless me fryer friar, for I have sinned. It's been like 12 hours since I last had sausages.

So, there's this whole cottage nerdherd industry that's popped up around pointing out that eating bacon is a damned fine idea.

There are shirts proclaiming the love of bacon. BaconFreak.com is a store site entirely dedicated to all the products you can get, including a not-small page called "Bacon Beverages" (which apparently is distinct from the "Swine & Wine" section). Jim Gaffigan has a whole shtick in his standup routine about bacon in all its awesome glory.

Here's my penance. I love bacon. I also am a (sadly increasingly) big fan of ham. And sausage. And pepperoni. And pork chops. See, it turns out that pork can often be prepared into a variety of tasty dishes.

So, why are we treating bacon like it's something we just discovered and named for the first time ever?

Gimme a million dollars and I'll call her whatever you want

So have you picked a name?

Nunya.

Nunya? That's unusual. What is that, Russian?

Short for "Nunya Damn Business."

Ebola? More like SHEbola! Am I right? Huh?

Gonna launch a new app, specifically for people who want to get the latest stats, profiles and news on today's professional bowlers.

I'm calling it E-bowla.

I'm hoping it goes viral.

The ability to eat your meat AND have your pudding.

I've been hearing a lot of discussion about how Jameis Winston is killing his NFL career options because of college chicanery.

I dunno, it's worth pointing out that the two longest careers for Noles from the previous championship were Lavernaeus Coles (who got kicked off the team) and Sebastian Janikowski (who was supposedly nearly kicked out of the country).

I'm sure a lot of teams are really thrilled they passed on Dan Marino because he mighta partaken in the ol' devil weed in college. Randy Moss and Warren Sapp probably are just fine with how their careers turned out, thanks.

Man code confession....

I regularly forget which one is the Big Ten and which one is the Big 12.

I'm sure this is partially my brain rebelling against the fact that there are now fourteen teams in the Big Ten and ten teams in the Big 12.

At least I know which teams are generally grouped together... I just seem to have a block against which stupid moniker they're clinging to.

Also... Army uniform now comes with sneakers.

This blog has received EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of how, exactly, the Obama administration expects to honor its promise that it can confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria without introducing any boots on the ground.

Review of I, Alex Cross by James Patterson

I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

You can give this one a pass, and you won't be missing much.

There isn't much in this book that could be considered thought-provoking or even especially challenging.

When a man who's readily recognizable and highly connected in the White House is committing sex crimes, and then the author makes a point of saying it's not the VP and the president is a married woman, well... it weren't the butler.

I saw another reviewer here bring up an excellent point as well. Alex Cross doesn't actually UNCOVER much of anything in this book. The Brit (Nicholson?) hands him a video of the crime, and Generic Agent X hands him another video of the crime. A witness tells him who did it, and they go off to arrest the guy. Cross doesn't actually DO a great deal in this, at least in terms of investigative work. It all drops in his lap.

Once you get past a small handful of characters (Cross, his central casting grandmother, and to a lesser degree Bree), there's almost no description or fleshing out of characters. The various elected officials & staffers are all interchangeable and pretty one-dimensional, as are any other cops. I guess it's unfair to criticize a thin central character in the middle of what's a serial of books but it's also telling that at the end when Cross proposes to Bree... to that point I had no idea she wasn't his wife.

It's largely inoffensive, and I pushed through the CDs relatively quickly. I'd say it's relegated to beach reading, but it doesn't even have the benefit of a lot of dramatic tension or suspense that would make it light yet entertaining fare.

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Have you thought about not sucking?

I listen to a lot of sports radio. I guess it's a "guilty pleasure" of sorts. It's really pretty ticky-tacky content sometimes. But you do get good updates and some of the hosts are pretty entertaining and/or humorous.

Since I'm generally listening to the Miami stations, I hear a lot of Canes callers. It occurs to me these fans pretty much fall into one of two camps (no, NOT alumni and the other 95% of the fan base)...

Caller I: "It's really disconcerting when I see the UM offense relegated chiefly to screen passes and dump-offs to the safety valve receiver for short gains. Starting a true freshman is a gamble. Even when trailing against a team like Louisville, the vertical threat seems to be almost completely eliminated, which of course means the box gets loaded up to shut down the run as well. Is this concern being sufficiently addressed?"

Caller II: "We're BAD. We used to be GOOD. We lose now. We should not lose. Other teams should lose to us. We had SWAGGER! I want swagger. This coach should go away and instead there should be a coach that is GOOD."

Interestingly, I suspect it's more of the FIRST category that actually goes to the games when UM plays FAMU this weekend... and more of the second that has a UM logo tattoo (and, okay yes... went to FIU.)

The Theory of Everything That Is Convenient To Plot Device?

So there's (another?) movie coming out about Stephen Hawking's life. I can see how it could make a pretty compelling drama. I can also see how it could make a virtually bulletproof anti-abortion argument, but that's SUCH another topic for another time (which may be the twelfth never).

It seems the story chiefly focuses on his illness and precipitous decline, but presented as a love story. That might get a bit tricky since he apparently left his first wife for one of his nurses (and subsequently divorced #2 too.)

Hopefully they don't pull too much out of their ass like they did with A Beautiful Mind... I think that'd be hard because Stephen Hawking's certainly better known and documented than John Nash will ever be. Nash ain't gonna get calls from Star Trek, Simpsons and Big Bang Theory to swing by.

I'm hoping for more of a Walk The Line-esque "warts and all" kind of approach. It's funny that in the trailer they drop in the bit about the voice of his speech system being "American" even though he's a Brit. I've read before that he's said (perhaps as humor) that's the one thing that bothers him about his condition.

I wonder, only half-seriously... if the system were designed today instead of 40 years ago, would it be built for things like linking YouTube videos instead of picking words from menus?

 I think I could probably go an entire day just responding to people by clicking on YouTube links. (Depending on my stubbornness and licensing restrictions I might be able to do it with just lines from The Godfather). I don't particularly intend to try that anytime soon, though.

As Irish as French fries

Gonna start a band specifically built around lip synching songs for Riverdance albums. It's gonna be called Sham Rock.

Review of Farside by Ben Bova. Ugh.

So apparently I can now post my Goodreads reviews to my own blog. So I will, because...reasons. Farside by Ben Bova
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ugh.

I just hope reading this doesn't sour someone out there from trying similar entries in the genre that are a bit more daring like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein.

If there's a vehicle in this book, prepare for it to "trundle" across the surface. Thesaurus be damned. You may have trouble remembering that Dr. Ulrich, the facility's research chief, is interested in the Nobel Prize --- because it's only mentioned about 18x and sometimes there's a full three lines between this fact being brought up again. The main "character", Trudy, has a face that's round. Grant wants to know if the nanobots in his body could have been responsible --- then he is going to go ask IN PERSON if the nanobots in his body could have been responsible. Then he's going to ask okay REALLY this time...

After sections on nanomachines being able to bore into things microscopically, there's a great deal of dithering about as these scientists try to surmise what might be responsible for microscopic pinholes appearing in things. One of the big reveals is: But what element are they eating? It's the vanadium!! (I don't know what, exactly, as a reader we're supposed to do with that information. It doesn't exactly unlock any other doors).

The story hints at what could have at LEAST been a good - if paint by numbers - horror/mystery by having a confined space where a pinprick could kill dozens of people and nobody knows who's toting around the pins. Sort of an Alien minus the alien. Instead, when people are quarantined on the far side of the moon and a couple of people suddenly die, everyone seems... I'd call it "inconvenienced"?

Similarly wasted opportunity: We think that planet out there might be similar to Earth. We build (at great expense and loss of life) a telescope. It detected there are indeed signs of being like Earth! Aaaaaand that's all you'll hear about that. I mean introducing an Earth2 is kind of "Chekov's Gun". You really should DO something with it once it's established. The reaction on Earth1 if they looked through the 'scope and saw, say, signs of ancient cities over yonder... well now maybe THAT could have been an interesting story.


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No me gusta.

Someone totally Typhoid Mary'd us at one of the July 4 parties. TLMS and I are pretty laid out. She's barely left the bedroom since Friday. Ugh.

Another new Drawnlines.com article

From my entirely too infrequent blog...

The firm of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Crist, a-phoneys at law. (via www.drawnlines.com)

“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there. I was a Republican, and I saw the activists and what they were doing; it was intolerable…

---

A PSA you'll never see

Two guys in a high school parking lot.

Guy #1: "Dude... you don't want to get a Chevy Volt, that car's kinda gay."

Girl off to the side: "Guys! It's really lame to use the word gay to refer to something you don't think is cool! It hurts."

Guy #2: "Really? Because it seems to me like the people fighting the redefining of the word 'gay' are the same ones that changed its meaning in our parents' generation. Actually, come to think of it you just used 'lame' and 'cool', both of which are slang that have evolved through common usage. That's how English works."

Girl off to the side: "Gay kids are subject to ridicule and abuse and violence all over. It has to stop!"

Guy #1: "See now it's weird that you'd use that adjective. Kids of any kind shouldn't be abused and hurt... why do we need a classification more than that?"

Girl off to the side: "RACIST!"

Shed a tear for hipsters....

...for they won't be able to drink this beer before it was cool.

http://www.thatsnerdalicious.com/beer/ever-wonder-what-a-3300-year-old-beer-would-taste-like/?tru=Fc4eG#more-67351

That's Nerdalicious: "Curious About What a 3,300 Year-Old Beer Tastes Like?"

Curious About What A 3,300-Year-Old Beer Tastes Like?
Read more at http://www.thatsnerdalicious.com/beer/ever-wonder-what-a-3300-year-old-beer-would-taste-like/#3VTQM3QvTKFvo8XW.99

Curious About What A 3,300-Year-Old Beer Tastes Like?
Read more at http://www.thatsnerdalicious.com/beer/ever-wonder-what-a-3300-year-old-beer-would-taste-like/#3VTQM3QvTKFvo8XW.99

An Act of Parliament

I dreamt I was talking to Bootsy Collins in 1969 when he was coming up (which I'm not sure he was), told him I saw him in concert in the late 1990s (which I'm not sure i did), and to take comfort in the fact that he's still relevant even today in 2014 (which I'm not sure he is).

Cuz you gotta have dreams. And class.

I think really my secret deepest goal is someday to be rich enough and connected enough that I can make donations to legislators just to get them to put random shit out there on official record.

Like, giving a state senator a thousand bucks to find a way to legitimately use "#SimpsonsDidIt !!!" from the floor.

Or tossing a congressman $10,000 to say "Mr. chair, I'd like to take a moment of personal privilege if I might. Ahem. MONKEYS!!!!!!!! Thank you."

House of Cards, Season 2, ep. 12

So, Frank's finally done what he was tipping his hand to all along. He's warming up the "get rid of the president in front of me" bus. WELL, I'm sure that'll end with him unemployed and doing the speaker circuit or going on Schmox News, and not at all in his oh-so-shocking turn on this president. I suspect the final episode will have the president bleat "I thought I could trust you! I was a fool."

The FBI thing is messily wrapping itself up. The guy whose name no one can probably remember who was the deep plant in the deep web has access to the AT&T grid so the FBI won't... oh who cares.

The Remy vs. Major Dad thing is playing out interestingly because it's not entirely clear just what role Remy will play... 12 ended with him trying to keep a door partially open to Frank, and Major Dad being rightfully upset to learn Remy Martin VSOP was keeping a line in to the guy he was supposedly burying. One can presume this means Remy will toss a juicy steak to Frank and get back in his good graces.

House of Cards, episode 2, season 11

Not gonna say too much about the Meechum scene... It wasn't precisely where I thought they were going, but still... Meh. The similar thing from the service academy reunion last year seemed a bit in your face-ish, and this did too.

 It overshadows what happened towards the beginning, but we're somehow supposed to remember that the guy Remy Martin VSOP is talking to in the beginning is the... former majority leader? whatever it was... that whimpery Marine chick congresswoman destroyed by telling the world he had a developmentally disabled daughter that he was bankrolling but not visiting. (Which seemed a really dodgy storyline to begin with... Expecting us to recall it 10 show hours later is really a bit much)

I like the way the special independent prosecutor is going... While I don't know how realistic this setup is (I doubt they'd ever have the VP and his chief of staff testify together), at least it's logical and a good way to show Frank both trying to plant seeds AND adjust to what's coming at him.

I made the mistake of seeing something when doing a quick bit of looking something up that May have spoiled the end of the season for me... But then they're also tipping they're hand a lot. Frank suuuuure does seem to have a situation where his "superior" the president, could get in trouble instead of him. But that's ok, we know he never has power or self-preservation in mind.

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 10

Oh sweet Jesus let this be the end of the Remy Martin VSOP and whatshername congresswoman marine chick's relationship. The upside is in this episode it goes in the shitter. The downside is not until a painfully slow scene of him asking about her tattoo while they're in bed together. Ugh.

The "not-at-all-overly-complicated" Raymond Tusk / casino owning Indian / Chinese investor thing is coming out thanks to he Wall Street Schmournal starting to sniff around it. Frank, it seems, tossed them the scent. Shorthand is it means foreign money's coming into campaigns. The thing seems silly (there are ways to get in of rowing money that are perfectly legal, after all). At least is is moving along some, and with the Schmournal digging it's not as if you can just lean on the next guy at the Washington Schmost. Speaking of which, this seems like several episodes since we were supposed to give two figs about the original paper's investigation, or the guy rotting in "Too Many Characters To Have Moving Around State Prison"

There's a storyline about Stamper guy liking it when the Kristen Stewart chick reads to him. Soooooo that's a thing.

Frank tells the president not to worry when he says he's worried, and the president is apparently back to being Jedi-mind-tricked.

I think this is the first time we've seen a real assassination / terrorism threat in the show, unless I'm forgetting. In a twist, it's someone pissed at Claire rather than Frank.

Homestretch.

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 9

I don't know what happen to the WaPo recaps, but here's a Baltimore Sun one.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-02-17/entertainment/bal-house-of-cards-recap-season-2-episode-9-20140217_1_claire-adam-freddy

Things went south for Rib Shack Guy, collateral damage in shots taken at Frank Underwood (not literally, at least not yet.) You know he was el doomedo when he reached out to bring in the troubled ex-con son who didn't want anything to do with him and had a hot temper and was only one strike away from going back in the clink... I'm sure there's some name for this meme, but it always reminds me of Goose's wife showing up to surprise him right before the big flight in Top Gun.

Still, they actually handled it well. In retrospect they had to do something with this character, because the alternative was that he was becoming a bit of the "Kindly Wise Poor Black Man" one-dimensional character, and this show's been good about zagging when you expect it to zig... and yet zagging still actually makes sense. Cutting the legs out from under a friend of Frank hurts Frank deep... on a couple of levels: 1) Frank feels powerless to help a friend, and being powerless really bothers him... and 2) The few people he genuinely cares about he does in fact care about.

The other main storyline is that the artsyfartsy photographer guy released a photo of Claire in the shower, and Claire's reaction / response is to hire a model to cut her hair similarly and say it was her. This plan seems kind of fragile --- my guess is the wheels are gonna come off it.

This was the Jodie Foster-helmed one. I kinda braced for it, but it was actually not particularly annoying, which was a relief.

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 8

Another case of having waited a bit too long since having watched it (and I seem to be ahead of the Washington Post summaries now), but here are my thoughts...

Love that the Indian reservation gambit isn't necessarily breaking easily or well for Frank. I suppose he'll finally get (most of) what he wants, but especially for those who aren't surprised by his character, such as Raymond MajorDad Tusk, that he's not automatically fooling them or outflanking them is a nice change.

Someone referred to the Remy the Lobbyist and House Majority Whip Whasername "romance" as being high school. I think that pretty much sums it up, it's really a yawner.

Rachel gave solace to her friend from the church and let her crash at her place... and in Hollywood sure enough if two attractive women are sharing a place and not fighting, well surely that's a recipe for the ol' lipstick lesbian thing. And we get a bit of that. At least with Rachel it makes a bit of sense as she's got such a sordid personal history. Still... meh. And her obsessive overseer guy who's also eerily into her told her not to have anyone over --- I hope that's not going to net out how it's being telegraphed (he finds out and beats her up. Or if they want to go the new Hollywood cliche route he starts beating her up which leads again to sex.)

The counterpunches coming in against Claire and Frank now are interesting too... this episode ended with word getting out of her having cavorted around with the photographer for a while.

This makes at least two total episodes where they've completely skipped the journo who's in federal prison but might know some of Frank's really shadier stuff. They'd better get back to that soon or else it'll be too far gone to call up again.

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 7

There's a lot of moving pieces in this... Like I've said before the WaPo blow by blow helps. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/03/07/house-of-cards-recap-season-2-episode-7-youre-out-of-line-frank/

This was probably one of the better episodes for President CardboardCutout, though I still wonder how someone so vacillation could be at that level of success. Still. The scenes with him and Frank were engaging, and I liked the whole punching bag thing. It's not entirely clear what the Underwoods (well, chiefly Claire for now) are gunning for by sticking thorns into the prez marriage and to making Russo's ex-aide/gf into a sore spot. It might just be to loosen one of the legs of the stool on the guy standing a bit higher than Frank.

The story of Rib Guy gives story about how much veep likes his ribs, Rib Guy gets offered endorsement deal is unfolding nicely. It's realistic yet compelling. I hope it they unfold that one well.

Too much on the Chief of Staff's sighing over the HookerWithTheHeartOfGold. I hope they wrap that up.

They seem to be offloading the PR guy they brought in with such promise... but that's just as well, if you keep introducing new characters every so often you have to write one into a coma or else it just gets messy. The other... umm... aide? looks too similar anyway so it was hard keeping them straight.

Good setup and delivery with the casino Native American guy who isn't immediately swayed by Frank's bull, esp. when he already has a sweeter sugar daddy in Major Dad Tusk. They're shrewd in that these situations only stay interesting if Frank's plans don't always play out as cakewalks. 

Sometimes you wanna see someone tell him he's playing too weak of a hand. Kudos that this Lonnigan or whatever it was did so.

The "you want the bridge, you can't have the bridge..." Is it over the McGuffin River?

House of Cards, season 2, ep. 6

Energy prices? Meh. I know it's a big concern but the way they played it seemed very 70s. Of course, not as 70s as the green screen background they used for Underwood "at" the Orioles game. I did like Frank being concerned about the pitch looking bad.

The editor who was following up on Zoe's amateur gumshoeing got thrown in the clink as part of a plan to shut him up... But he's not being kept from calling other editor buddies and telling them the whole story. So it'll just (presumably) shift again to the next editor guy because they don't seem to have a handle not he "shut him up" aspect of this. I guess you could argue Frank and his Franklets can't just go around whacking reporter after reporter after reporter... but it sure does seem like they need to doa. Better job occasionally having someone "fall down an elevator shaft onto some bullets".

We get another "go intimidate Rachel in her squirreled off life" thing. I do like that she's finding some solace in a community church thing, not just because it's actually a respectable portrayal of a positive community group, but because I legitimately can only hazard guesses as to which direction they'd ale things from there.

I feel like this review is a bit more negative than my reaction was... I dunno that that's fair. But the energy thing did have a real "monster of the week vibe"... And oy the green screen.

If you don't know what JFGI means, JFGI.

There are two types of days... days when I can successfully tell someone JFGI and days that aren't worth getting out of bed.

ANOTHER New German Word...

Clockensqueel --- The euphoric feeling on those rare occurrences when something wakes you up in the middle of the night and you roll over to look at the clock thinking "I bet it's almost 6:30. Please don't be almost 6:30 I'm still so tired." and it's only like 12:45 AM and you still have plenty of time to sleep.

House of Cards, season 2, episode 5

So it seems most of this season's episodes fall into one of two ends of the pendulum... "OMG I can't believe it" and "then the story moved along some"... It's fair, I mean these people aren't Jack Bauer they're not wrestling a nuclear bomb with their bare hands at the top of every hour.

It was good to see Claire up against it inasmuch as she threw out a story that had some inconsistencies in connecting her abortion to the sexual assault (the timing is off because it was a lie, and even our secret reptilian overlords don't have five year gestational periods). But the conference to review and criticize military policies on disclosing assault after the big public shocker seemed a little like  a class discussing the physics of nuclear fission the day after Nagasaki.

The Washington "Herald" reporter has gotten caught in the FBI net so... That happened. The story moved along some.

I'm not sure I love what appears to be setting up Claire's new press secretary to fail. The idea that he didn't find a 60 year old journal and quash it... Meh. Your hairdresser is not your plumber.

Onward and upward.

House of Cards season 2 ep. 4

It's been a little while since I watched this one...

Firstly, wow. This was clearly the best Claire episode of the season. Do you suppose she really did decide on the fly that she was going to use the public acknowledgement of her abortion as a chance to get out word of the past rape? Or was it a plan?

I suspect it was a bit of both... She was waiting for what might be the right (calculated) time to strike back and saw the scope lined up perfectly.

The Frank / anthrax story was kinda interesting too. I expected them to wrap with a wink that he set up the whole situation so he'd be guaranteed a quarantine with that rep he was trying to move, but they didn't. Makes sense though, it's not as if he could have known for certain when the mail room would get, open the package.

The reporter / secret cloak and dagger stuff... Meh. At least it's progressing. And it's something different from "oh I'll get the bill passed... MY way. Mwahahah"