Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Friggin’ Dreary

    Is it just me or is everyone depressed? NetNewsWire is delivering a stream of woeful folks and things that will depress you if you aren’t already. It’s rainy and miserable outside. It’s miserable inside. Is it the back-to-school-end-of-summer bleaghs? Or, is it something deeper?

    I admit it, the news today isn’t great. It’s dreary. Listening to Groove Armada isn’t helping. This gigantic headache and neckache I’ve had for the last week isn’t helping (the hypochondriac in me is sure that I have West Nile).

    I’m not sure Phish is the cure for the blues, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll come back after The Mango Song and let you know how it goes. And because I feel today is nothing more than a steady stream of asides to a non-existant audience – did you know I have 1.73 gigabytes of Phish MP3’s from probably \$300 worth of CD’s that I own?

  • Decisions, Decisions

    John Kerry officially announced his candidacy today. To compare, I went back and read Howard Dean’s. Now, Dean’s was a couple months ago, and is lacking in specifics. Kerry’s was today and is pretty darn specific on the big issues. After watching his Meet the Press appearance yesterday, I’m not sure who I’m going to vote for on February 24th (the day of the Democratic Primary in Virginia).

    John Kerry has years of experience at the national level. We’ve elected governors the last two presidents, and maybe it’s time to see how a Senator does (you have to go back to, I think, Kennedy to find another President who went straight from Senator to President – LBJ was VP first, Carter – Bush II were all governors, right? Correct me if I’m wrong). John Kerry, like Dean, strikes me as a reasonable man who uses a sharp intellect to make decisions based on facts. This is an advantage over Bush. Kerry has military experience. Kerry is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and therefore has some foreign policy experience, which Dean doesn’t.

    I still like Dean’s fire. I love the grassroots support he’s built up. I like his honesty, but Kerry impressed me. They both have until February to win me over. Honestly, I’m happy to have two quality candidates to choose from, both with a solid chance of beating GW in 2004. I’ll be happy to support either one against GW next year.

  • Depressing and Enlightening

    This article about how the Administration makes policy decisions is scary. It’s depressing that the most powerful man in the world makes decisions without the facts and then tries to make the facts conform to the outcome he wants. It’s unbelievable. It’s unethical. Jen and I have been talking about this quite a bit (I finally got Ms. Political Science degree to talk politics with me – yay me), and we both agree that we’d rather have a President who reasons through an issue and comes up with what they honestly think is the best solution and not what we have now – a President and Administration that decides on a course of action before looking at the facts or consulting experts. Their disdain for people who actually know what they’re talking about is frightening to me, but makes perfect sense when you think about their track record – read the article. It’s an eye-opener.

    And because I linked to that, I have to tell you about Talking Points Memo and Oliver Willis. Talking Points is one of the most intelligent and coherent political blogs on either end of the political spectrum, and has turned into a daily must-read for me. Oliver is a funny guy who frequently makes excellent points (plus, he’s got a huge Dean banner on his site and is a ‘Skins fan). Read ’em both. Enjoy.

    Oh, and Dawson loves me.

  • New Pics

    Now that things are back up and running, here are the new photos in the gallery:

    In other news, I killed the basil plant I bought at the Farmer’s Market. Max and I were doing a really good job of remembering to water it, but I you can’t take a week off from watering… oh well. Maybe we can revive it.

  • Dropping the Pooch

    At least he just dropped the pooch… I swear this isn’t political, but the look on the little girl to the left of GW’s head iis priceless. If it weren’t for that girl’s frozen horror, it would look like GW was cheering on a complicated canine trick.

  • We’re Back!!

    That was no fun, but I’m mostly back online. There are still a bunch of missing photos, and some links may be broken because I changed the permalinks to something a little more managable (having one directory with 1900+ files in it is never a good idea). I know, you’re not supposed to break permalinks, but I don’t care. I did it anyway. It’s my site.

    Why did I switch? Well, as you may have seen, my site was down for a while. Why? Well, apparently, my previous web host was hit by a dDOS attack, which explains the site being unreachable. But, why, after it came back, were all my html files 0-length, and every time Movable Type went to recreate them, were they 0-length? I didn’t change anything. Plus, this isn’t the first time my site, or part of the service has gone down. So… I’m gone. Now, I’m with Insider Hosting, and am really impressed so far. The MySQL performance alone is much better than with the old host. Plus, they have a really cool control panel and SpamAssassin!

    I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about, but I’m sick today… again. So, the new pics, and other stuff will probably wait until Tuesday when I can get the rest of them back online.

  • I Tried, I Really Tried

    I tried to send Michele an e-mail for her Voices project. I couldn’t do it. I just can’t. Why? I’m not sure. The memories are too raw, too real and too close. It’s been almost two years, and I can’t do it.

    I watched Bowling for Columbine yesterday. It was difficult, but even if you don’t agree with him, the message of the movie is important. It’s time to stop being afraid. As a country, we’re still full of grief, anger, pain and in some cases, guilt. Call it national survivor’s guilt. The thing I took from the movie was that we’re a country that’s afraid of itself. We’re afraid of our neighbors, unforeseeable catastophies, shadowy conspriracies, natural disaster, etc. We’re scared because we’re not in control, because the news media crams fear down our throats. The comparison between international media and our’s was incredible.

    Even if you hate Michael Moore, he’s right. It’s time to stop being afraid. It’s time to stop allowing the Administration to play on that fear to advance its ideological nonsense while we duct tape our windows and buy distilled water.

    It’s time to ignore the Media. It’s time to stop paying attention to vague threats, insufficient theories and hysterical diatribes from those paid to make money for their networks.

    I think that this year, on September Eleventh, I’m not going to watch the news. I’m not going to watch TV at all. I’m going to hug my wife, hug Max and I think I’ll take the day off and we’ll do something quiet as a family. He’s too young to remember what happened while he was over at a friend’s house playing, or understand why his father is crying. Hopefully, he’ll remember that we spent a good day savoring twenty-four hours that will never come again.

    Maybe that’s what it’s about. Maybe the way we honor the dead, the damaged and the grieving and fight the fear is to take that day to create better memories, create visions of our loved ones smiling and laughing to replace the tears and disbelief of that day.

    I don’t know if that’s the answer. But, I’m not afraid to try. I’m not afraid.

  • Maddenisms

    Sorry, one more before I go to bed… how creepy is it when John Madden says “penetration”?

  • Off This Week

    Aloooooha. I’m off work most of this week and doing stuff with the fam. Don’t expect much until Friday, when I’ll hopefully tell you all about the Dean rally on Saturday, show you the pictures and tell you what I thought. You can read my lovely sister’s account if you wish. I have a much more favorable impression of the event, but I must say that I was so happy that she went with me. It showed a lot of guts and maturity on her part to go to a rally for a candidate she knew she didn’t agree with on issues that are important to her. She went because I asked her, and she knew it was important to me. It meant a lot that she went.

    So, pictures coming on Friday (unless I get bored, which I’m not yet), and more stories when I get to it.

  • Busy, Yet Naughty

    I am a naughty blogger. All my offline time is spoken for. I’m trying to get Michelle’s redesign finished (I know, I know). I’ve got the templates mostly configured, and I just need to finish ironing out the bugs and get the main archive page finished. I installed Movable Type for Dawson last night, and have just been too tired to do anything else. This sinus infection just won’t go away. Thankfully, I have the next six days off from work, which will be a much needed respite from insanity.

    I did convince my mother, father and little sister to go to the Dean rally on Saturday! Yes, that was my big accomplishment this week. Next week? It will probably be seeing how many hours in a row I can sleep without waking up.