Christmas 2011

Here's a few photos from Christmas 2011. The kids woke up at 2am this morning and came into our bedroom wanting to open presents. I remember doing this to my mom when I was a kid, so I guess it's revenge.

We got them each a kid's camera this year, and it seems that is turning out to be their favorite gift. Anything to keep them away from my expensive camera.

Ramblings #15

As it gets closer to Christmas, Sara and Kyle seem to get more and more excited, and they're extremely energetic. I find myself yelling at them all the time for doing things I always used to do when I was a kid: touching and knocking ornaments off the Christmas tree, stealing (and eating) candy canes from the tree, trying to locate (and open) the Christmas presents, etc. I guess I should just expect that kids will be kids, and behavior doesn't change from generation to generation. Even when I used to teach kids in Taiwan, it would surprise me sometimes how their behavior reminded me of my own childhood.

In Taiwan, though, they don't celebrate Christmas, so my wife Christy doesn't quite "feel the Christmas magic" like everyone else in the house. She grew up the child of poor Taiwanese farmers, and according to her, the only thing she ever knew about Christmas was that "people sent cards to each other." Oh well, maybe after she's been living here for 10 years, she'll start to feel "the magic!"

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Just took the kids to see "The Muppets" recently and found it to be pretty disappointing. Rather than fill the movie with funny skits (like the first Muppet movie), this one seemed to dwell too much on the fact that the Muppets were old and outdated. Apparently even Frank Oz (the voice of many of the muppets) didn't even like this story, and refused to lend his voice to the project. I can see why.

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So...another GOP candidate bites the dust. Pizza man Herman Cain has dropped out. Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann's campaigns are all but dead. So who is left? Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and possibly Ron Paul (a longshot). Newt Gingrich seems to be in the lead right now, which is a shock to just about everyone (Democrats in particular).

If scandalous affairs killed Herman Cain's chances at the nomination, one only needs to look at Gingrich's history and see that Cain's got nothing on ol' Newt. Newt is the guy who cheated on his wife while she was in the hospital with cancer. Yeah, John Edwards did the same thing, but that pretty much killed his chances at the presidency. Normally, this kind of behavior doesn't occur until after they become president, so I'd have to take a guess here and say that Newt won't make it through the primaries.

So that leaves us with Mitt Romney, who will likely be the candidate. I used to think he was the most "tolerable" of the Republican nominees, but now I have second thoughts. He's the typical politician who says what people want to hear, no matter if it contradicts previous statements or not. The guy flip-flops on everything. I now think that Jon Huntsman is the only guy who doesn't seem to pander to the right-wing extremists. What does it say when Huntsman is the only candidate that will actually admit that global warming is a real problem? But...that kind of thinking won't get him very far, since he seems to be dead last in this race.

Here's a video that pretty much sums up the problem with the current GOP:

Black Friday

I've never gone to any "Black Friday" sales, not even one. Nor do I have any intention of going to one, although I'm always curious to see what sort of mayhem will erupt somewhere in the country. Just doing a quick Google search of "Black Friday violence 2011" I see that some woman used pepper spray on a bunch of people at a Wal-Mart. And there were a few shootings as well. Very, very sad.

One item this year did catch my eye, though. There was a Sharp, 40 inch 1080p HD TV for sale for $199 at Best Buy. This seemed like a good deal to me, but then I read the stories that people were camping out since Tuesday to get this deal on Friday. Yes, there are people willing to give up 3 days of their lives, miss Thanksgiving dinner with their families, just so they can get a cheap television set. A television, it seems, is more important than spending time with your family. Luckily, I know my priorities. If I can't just walk in and buy something without spending hours (or days) in line, it isn't worth it to me.

So, this morning, I thought I would check out some of the deals on Amazon from the comfort of my own home. Most of the stuff Amazon is offering is stuff I would never buy (a 7-pack of cassette tapes? really? who still uses cassettes?) Then I noticed an electronic toy from LeapFrog, a company that makes educational toys for kids. It was currently on sale for only $7.00, so I thought I would buy it for my son Kyle. The Amazon website, it seemed, was so overloaded that I couldn't even buy it. First they had a problem with address, and I had to enter it into their system about 3 separate times. After that, I couldn't apply my rewards points to the purchase. I tried again a few times, but kept getting the same error messages. By the time I navigated my way through their checkout process, the discounted toy was back to its original price, and was now "sold out." So...screw 'em. If they can't anticipate the volume of users going to their website today, then they are freakin' idiots. They had an option to "chat" with one of their customer service reps, but it was conveniently not working today, so instead I sent them a nice little email, complete with colorful language.

Happy Black Friday everyone!

(Picture: "If you listen to fools, the mob rules!)

Thanksgiving 2011

Here's a few pictures from Thanksgiving 2011. For the first time since we moved back to the US, I finally had the whole day off. I guess that's something to be thankful for.

The other person in the top photo is one of my co-workers at the hospital.

Music Wars

Although I try to play Pink Floyd at home and in the car as much as possible, I don't think I've done my job at brainwashing Sara into liking them. She's starting to have her own, independent taste in music (which is fine). What does she like?

Taylor Swift, especially the song "You Belong With Me"
Lady Antebellum, and the song "Need You Now"
The Black Eyed Peas
Lady Gaga
Katy Perry, especially the songs "Firework" and "E.T."
Adele, and "Rolling in the Deep"

Yes, who would have thought, she likes to listen to current music, not stuff from the 70's. Oh well, I tried.

Some of the songs above are okay, but country music? Please, say it isn't so! I'm going to go out on a limb here, and possibly offend half the state of Texas, but country music simply sucks! I'd rate it about as highly as I do rap music. How can I take any music seriously that sings about having a "bar b que stain on my white t-shirt." This is just lame, pedestrian writing. I could easily write the lyrics to a country music song within 10 minutes if I wanted to. I would just have to write about my girlfriend dumping me for losing my job, and how I'm going to get drunk and watch football. Piece of cake.

I don't think all country music is bad. I just so happen to own (well, used to own) CD's by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. I also like some songs by John Denver, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn. But, they're old school country. I saw one country act at Austin City Limits this year (Jack Ingram), and at one point he took off his cowboy boots and started singing to them. Sigh.

Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry are just a flash in the pan. Listen to their music and you can clearly hear that it is all "auto-tuned." They can't really sing. They need a computer to get in tune. The only singer that Sara likes that seems to have some talent is Adele. At least she's got a good singing voice.

I think Sara might have inherited Christy's "bad music gene." When I met Christy, she was listening to boy band crap. I have since opened her mind to better music, but I'll still occasionally hear her listening to Blue, Wet Wet Wet, and Sugababes.

I think Kyle might have got my music gene, though. The other day I heard him singing "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train!"

Ramblings #14

What is the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street? While looking for information online, I came upon the chart you see above. Is it entirely true? No, probably not. The media tends to focus on the most insane members of the tea party and make it look as though they are representative of the entire movement. On the other end, they also focus on the most bizarre OWS participants as well, often showing dirty, unkempt homeless people.

What I don't get, though, is why there is so much hatred being directed at OWS. The Republican presidential candidates are attacking them, the police are (literally) attacking them. Do they fear we are the beginning of another American revolution?

It seems, for many, there is a misconception that OWS just wants free government handouts, and asking for something like "complete debt forgiveness" for student loans seems a bit extreme. But what are their real goals? This is what I found:

Goal 1:
Put a human face on the tens of millions of average Americans from every social, political, and economic strata who have had to put on hold plans to have a job, form a family, own a home, and live a normal life as the result of the dysfunctional mess that the United States has become. Occupy Wall Street is a way to let people across the country know that they are not alone in their struggles.
Goal 2:
Spotlight that the industrial-scale financial fraud at the core of the modern financial-services industry is a major source of this mess, and - because the entire political and legal system has been bought off - virtually nobody is being held to account. Just as we have the right to defend ourselves when we are being mugged, Americans have the right to defend ourselves from corporations that exploit our markets while moving jobs overseas or that evade taxes while using our roads, schools, and other public infrastructure.
Goal 3:
Point out that no partisan "10 Point Plan" will solve the mess we're in. The profound changes that we need will require the hard, slow work of rebuilding popular consensus by engaging with ideas from every point in the political and social spectrum. Wall Street and big corporate interests love never-ending political paralysis precisely because it leaves them free to cold-bloodedly strip the country bare.

Sounds reasonable to me.

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Sometimes if you wish for something long enough, miracles can actually happen. No, I'm not talking about winning the lottery. I'm talking about the best live concert ever...Roger Waters "The Wall Live" is coming to Austin! Yes, on May 3rd, 2012, the Roger Waters show will be performed at the Frank Erwin Center, a mere 20 minutes away from my house. He is doing one more tour of North America, hitting many of the cities he skipped the first time around. Frequent readers of my blog will know that the last time I had to travel to Dallas to see this show, and ended up having to pay my sister a hundred bucks to watch my kids, in addition to getting a hotel in Dallas. It was an expensive trip, to say the least.


Of course I will go again next year. There is no way I would not go. But...I will probably opt for slightly cheaper seats this time. This is a show that is so huge, it would be in your benefit to sit farther back.
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We had a breakthrough last night with Kyle. At 4 1/2 years old, Kyle is still not potty trained, but yesterday he finally succeeded in using the toilet. We have been trying everything: bribes, threats, you name it. Nothing was working. But finally we had some success.
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I didn't realize it until after the fact, but October 21st came and went without "Doomsday" occurring. Religious wacko Harold Camping was wrong again. I think it's time for this senile, old, false prophet to just fade away into obscurity.

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In one of my more recent blogs, I predicted that Obama would probably lose in 2012. Although, it's still a year away, I think that maybe now he has a 50/50 chance. If Herman Cain is the best candidate they have to run against him, I can't foresee a big victory for the GOP in 2012. All the Obama campaign has to really do is show how the "9-9-9" tax plan will raise taxes on just about everyone except the nation's wealthiest. People do have a bad habit of voting against their own interests, but this is very simple math, people.

Halloween 2011