Sorry for the delay

OK, life has been more than a little hectic - so I have kept this as a low priority, but had a few moments that I thought I'd take to discuss the Coffee Party movement. While this is a reply of sorts to the Tea Parties of late, it is not a bunch of angry lefties lashing out at the right.

The Coffee Party asks that we return to civil discussions, and that we come together as Americans to try to find a genuine common sense approach to solving the many problems our nation is facing. Following is a recent post from the Coffee Party Movement's Facebook page. I hope you will consider attending an event near you. From my experience, all beliefs are respected, as long as you show a willingness to respect others. It really isn't that difficult.

Join the Coffee Party Movement

“Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.”-- James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) In politics, we impose a left-right framework on the world. Let's drop this outdated framework that needlessly divides us a people. Let's commit to using our common sense and working together as fellow Americans

Music- a love story

When I was small, my family had a Magnivox entertainment center. Ours was not the typical "long and low" arrangement, however. In ours, the base held speakers, the middle section held a television, and the top held controls, an 8-track, a turntable, and album storage. I can still hear the records my mother would play on Saturday mornings while cleaning our house. Our babysitters would play 70's rock, my father would listen to Sinatra and ballgames- my sister and I would listen to Disney records.

I've always loved music- many types and styles. I don't care for angry music- as I use music as a refuge.

I'm thinking of this tonight because we had a bad night with my mother-in-law. She has Alzheimer's, and lives with us. I went to get some take out for dinner, and XM's New Wave station was playing Talking Heads' "Wild Life". It cleared so much in a short time. It steeled me against other issues. It smoothed my brow.

Now, to switch directions- I have a music dilemma. My current iPod contains 30,600+ songs. so, the efficiency loving part of my brain says "Why do you need the same song on the original album, live, in a remix, on the "Best of', as well as "The Greatest Hits'?" One would be amazed at how often this comes up. My OCD brain does not want to break up a set. Even if it's a song I am lukewarm about. Even if it is a song I have never (to the best of my knowledge) heard.

What to do?

Emoticons in 1862?

Here's a link to an article in the New York Times, which discusses a transcript of a Lincoln speech which seems to include ";)", an emoticon wink. Imagine getting paid for this job!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/hfo-emoticon/

MIssile base dreaming

By request, more on silos.

At one point in the history of the United States, there was a very real possibility that the leaders of the US and the then Soviet Union (which was still sometimes called "Russia") would annihilate everything on Earth. A figure I remember from high school was that just those two members of the "nuclear club" had sufficient firepower to rip the crust off of the Earth eighteen times. This bothered me quite a bit back then. The move Red Dawn did nothing to help. Nor did On the Beach, The Day After, Failsafe, or any of the many post-apocalyptic movies and books I read, watched, and discussed obsessively. Lord, I was an "up" person.

Anyway, in response to the threat of global thermonuclear war, the US built various types of bases to send nuclear bomb containing missiles to predetermined locations. By the late 1950's, we had begun building the Titan I missile bases. 18 were built in all, at a cost of $170,000,000 each (in 1960 dollars. Minimum wage was $1.00/ hour, and a new car could be had for $2,275). They were closed after only 5 years.

A few years ago, a Titan I base about 90 miles from where I sit was put on sale on eBay. Didn't sell, but I have large-lotto-jackpot-dreams for this little gem. Please keep in mind that I have many lotto dreams, which are in frequent rotation. Hey, it keeps me entertained.

First Titan I dream: convert the silos into mock ups of starship bridges, like a giant video game, and build a science fiction themed resort. I know more than a few people would pay to fight various aliens, and feel the ship shake and shimmy. I may write more about this someday. If one of you readers ever makes this happen, please just throw me an annual fee.

My other idea is to keep my loved ones (and Val) safe in TEOTWAWKI- also known as WTSHTF. There is almost nothing that I can think of that these babies couldn't handle. Nuclear War? heck, they were built for that. Global pandemic? air filters, water filtration, and lots of food storage would keep us healthy. We could even have a health club and garden. As well as a dog run. Civil unrest? Safe as can be? Zombie apocalypse? We could wait out the living dead for YEARS.

So, I was happy to stumble across "survivalcondo.com". (How does one stumble across a site such as this? ADD plus insatiable curiosity plus morbid thoughts lead one to interesting places on the web). They are selling condos built in one of the bases- see the diagram. If I had the coin, I might just buy one of these.

What the iPhone has done in our home.

OK, I'm going to start by saying that I mostly love the iPhone- even though I resisted getting one. My wife Beth had her first gadget crush ever on the iPhone, and I was a tad jealous. I'm reasonably certain Matt Lauer has quite a bit to do with her crush, and this is not uncommon.

ANYWAY- we both switched to AT&T and acquired iPhones in July. Since we live in a somewhat unhip place, the network problems that plague hipster dufii in major metropolitan areas are substantially reduced. BUT, all of a sudden, Beth had her own Facebook page, and was using a separate e-mail. She has staked out the laptop in the breakfast room, so I spend most of my home computer time on the Flinstones' desktop in my den (seriously, the desktop has been in four houses now).

However, in many ways Beth is taking baby steps onto the information superhighway. She is very fond of Yahoo's personal pages- which I vaguely remember from 1997 or so. She likes it because "it is so easy to use", and "it's not as cluttered as Facebook". Not to mention "there are so many great emoticons" (I had to explain that they were not all "smilies".)

That's it for this post- I may post later with some more on silos.

Vampires and Zombies

Well, since HBO started "True Blood", I became hooked on Charlaine Harris's "Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Murder Mysteries". This has led to me reading quite a few other Vampire books (shout out to Charlie Huston's books about a burnout vampire PI in Manhattan, among others.)

Well, shortly before a vacation, I was in a bookstore, looking for my guilty pleasure, and the vampire books were on a table with zombie books. So, now I'm reading about various zombie apocalypses (should this be apocolypsi?) Interestingly enough, having been a particularly morbid teenager during the Reagan presidency, I already had a certain fascination with survival-ism. Did you know that people are selling survival condos in former Titan missile bases? They are, and I am jealous that I never thought of that. There is a former base about 90 minutes from here, and it was for sale on eBay. But that's another post. Back to zombies. There was an interesting point that said that zombie lit sells VERY well in the US- because we, as a people, like to believe that determination and skills allow us to overcome any obstacle. Even the undead hoards.

It All Started in a 5,000-Watt Radio Station in Fresno, California...

This is a VERY obscure quote with which to start a blog. I happen to like obscure quotes. Diet Coke, too. iPods and overlarge dogs.

I'm not quite certain what direction my blog will take, but I've thrown the pasta at the wall, and it stuck.