We've Got Magic To Do

It is a beautiful thing

Today as I blogged searched, I came across a music video (thanks Jen) courtesy of YouTube. I never realized what a beautiful thing YouTube could be. To this day, I do not have cable. There was about a 6 month - 1 year stretch of my life when I did have digital cable and it was wonderful. I would drown in cable. My own life would cease to exist with all those channels to surf everyday. As you can see, this is why I do not have cable. I would literally rot away in front of the TV. My point is that I did not grow up with MTV and have never seen the music videos of my favorite songs. Thanks to YouTube, I will be rotting in front of my computer today!

I am not sure how to post YouTube videos, so here are the links.

Love those eighties love ballads! The videos are even better! And yes, I do have both of the eighties love ballad CD's.
Here's a few of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p61Q_DOwtps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUA0ai0XxRU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv6AGoGGxRE

This next one happens to be one of my favorite guitar hero songs. I am actually quite good at it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuKOc_Mpumc

Another one by the same artist -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cf6k4yJyv0

One of my all time favorite bands...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ns59Bmqpms

and the classic...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siBoLc9vxac&feature=related

Blast from my youth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeBScjiaf34&feature=related

And last but not least...the concert I will be at this weekend. I had the posters, t-shirts, buttons, autographed photos, and every tape (I still have all of the tapes). I do have the new CD, courtesy of my friend.
Then...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVRX7uu_2c&feature=related

Now...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qiZy7vmqY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw8RBL5_auk&feature=related

OK. Enough. I could do this all day. Enjoy or don't enjoy. This was my journey into my musical past.

San Francisco

Long time-no post. As Gwen had written, we were without our desktop due to a motherboard meltdown. The "Geek Squad" had the computer for three weeks and what a weird gimmick. It's a strange joke that Best Buy committed to years ago and has awkwardly kept going. I've waited in the lines and received dispassionate and uninformed answers from from the man-boys in white shirts with black ties with dead, dead eyes that scream "release me from this creepy, imitation warehouse where I am deteriorating in a sad world of white, blue, and yellow walls all to the soundtrack of Rock Band." There have been better Best Buys. This one is Best Buy purgatory.

Gwen and I bought a laptop today from Office Depot. It's good to be here in the year 2000.

I was in San Francisco last week for the Lions-49ers game. Tailgating with anonymous 49er fans was seriously good times. We traded giant bottles of wine for spicy brats, chips, and Heineken. I'm looking forward to San Diego in December where I will hopefully get to see the Chargers take on the Broncos. Gwen wants to go and bring Lola. I told her that that was out of the question. NFL games are nasty and often violent affairs. They are stadiums filled with men and you do not find unescorted women. An NFL game is no place for a child. There's always the "family section," but we would still need to wade through the "drunk rabble" on the way out of the stadium.

Classes are excellent this year and I still love my job. Gwen and I have been following politics and have been watching the debates together. Last Friday we held a debate party here at the house with some friends.

Apologies

Sorry for the neglect in our posts, but our computer is in the shop for another 3-6 weeks. We will update as soon as we can. Stay tuned...

Politics and Hodge Podge

On average, I hear the above song at least twice a day. Which is strange because it's a few years old. I dare you to avoid getting the melody into spin cycle between your ears.

Nothing too exciting around here lately. Lola is now rolling anywhere she desires, Gwen is devouring the Twilight series, and I'm adjusting to the new school year. Labor Day weekend included cell phone shopping, book store hopping, grilling with friends, Madden '09, and reading an insane number of articles in preparation for my class without a textbook. Two ways that I like to procrastinate and avoid lesson planning are by going to movies or the gym. Within the past few weeks I've seen Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Hamlet 2. All three movies were funny enough.

Classes started last Monday. This will be an interesting year for the politics alone. I am teaching all advanced classes and many of the kids want to discuss the presidential race. I get a few emails everyday from past and present students that send me youtube clips and newspaper articles. Most of my students care about and regularly follow current events. I'm working with one group this year that is organizing a charity event for homeless teens here in Las Vegas.

I'm going to go down and help make some phone calls for the Obama campaign this week and maybe walk the neighborhoods. I haven't really volunteered with a campaign since the John Kerry effort of 2004. I realized then that Kerry wasn't the strongest candidate but it was so clear that he was the better of the two options (thanks for the big menu!). Iraq was a moral and financial failure, the level of propaganda and outright dishonesty was enough to make Nixon blush, and you would have thought that the evangelicals would have been onto the fact that they were used. I remember a political cartoon the day after the election that had a hung-over and regret ridden Uncle Sam waking up next to a sloppy elephant.

Many of the anti-Obama crowd fall into one of three catagories:
1. "He won't manage the US in that he will weaken the military and abandon our "interests" overseas." These folks seem to forget that some of the most notorious war wagers were Democrats. Who knows, maybe Obama will pull an LBJ on Iraq? Maybe he'll "Truman it up all over Iran?" My personal hope is that he pulls troops out of Iraq and finds competant policy and oversight in Afghanistan. Maybe he'll even help put us back on a track were we don't torture or use secret gulag type prisons.
2. "He's a Muslim/anti-Christ/un-patriotic/etc." I really don't even know how to approach these arguments. Seriously, I think that the people that say and forward things like this are the reason that we had 8 years of G.W. Bush. These comments say too much. There is really no excuse to be this misinformed in the modern era. I understand that we're all a little crazy and most people get their information from one of the three or four major media conglomerates that control the flow and and type of information, but the statements above are frightening and potentially dangerous. These are the same people who believed (still believe?) that we are in Iraq to get back at "them" for 9/11. When people talk about these things it's embarrassing for most within earshot. The really sad thing is that these comments and emails often come from intelligent and humane people. The comments also seem to be rooted in a weird combination of blood lust, hatred, and fear.
3. "I just don't believe him when he talks about "change" and "hope." I fall slightly into this category. Change? Seriously? Is Vice President "I've been in the Senate for 30 years and helped rework bankruptcy law in favor of the credit card companies" Joe Biden, "change-y" enough for you? Change and hope aside, I'm voting against the party that dominated all three branches of the federal government. I'm also voting against my Democratic state senator that enabled the disasters of the early 2000s.


We've been trying to get tickets back to GR for Christmas. Prices are outrageous and flights are inconvenient. We will be home for Christmas.

Way over due

Sean has been asking me to update the blog for weeks. I have attempted a few times over the last week, but every time I try to do this, I end up blog surfing and reading a few of my favorites (don't judge, many others blog surf too!). Blog surfing is similar to those who have myspace or facebook and other peoples' lives seem much more interesting than mine. Anyway, with that said, here is what is new with us.

We recently went to Big Bear, CA, which I have seen advertised on TV several times. It was not what I expected. Sean and I thought it would be similar to Saugatuck, MI, but it is an actual city with a lake in the middle. It took longer to get there than planned and we did not get to do as much as I had hoped. We rented a cabin home for the weekend that was pet friendly, so Cruiser came along on the family trip. Lola did fairly well in the car, but did not forgot to remind us when it was time to eat. She slept for most of the car rides back and forth, as did Cruiser. I had hoped to go to the lake, the zoo, snow summit, and the village. We managed to go the the village...twice. We had some good food at Peppercorn Grill, which I highly recommend. The village is about 3 blocks by 3 blocks and surrounded by Big Bear City. It was nice to get away from Las Vegas with the sweltering heat, but not really what I had expected. With an infant, it is hard to rent jet skies or hike a mountain trail. I was glad to go on our first family vacation (not including our trip to GR on Memorial Day)



Lola started day care this past week and so far, so good. It is a licensed home that is a few blocks from my work (and home). Lada (easier for the kids to say, real name is Linda Jane) absolutely loves Lola, who is the only infant and only girl. It is too soon to tell how Lola will do there, but she is eating well and sleeping some. She is not used to the noise of 3 little boys to keep her up. She is 6 months now and eating cereal. We started veggies and started with squash, which she does not like as she makes funny faces when we put them in her mouth. Next, we will try sweet potatoes! She has decided to sleep on her tummy and there is nothing we can do to change this. We've tried to roll her onto her back, just to find her on her tummy in the morning. She seems to sleep better on her tummy. She still can not roll over onto her back and does not even attempt to. I am trying to teach her how to do this. She babbles a lot, makes bubbles, and says mama (just kidding about the mama part, but I am trying to teach her this too!). She is still a delightful little girl, full of smiles and giggles. We hope to come home for Christmas when she will be 10 months old! She is growing and changing so fast.

I am still at Silver Hills as a social worker, working a 4 day week. Sean reported back this past Wednesday and starts teaching on Monday. He may or may not go to UNLV this semester.

What Are You Reading/Watching?

Things have been been pretty mellow around here even though we are sure that Lola has begun teething. She's only had one rough night where she screamed for about two hours non-stop. Currently I am letting her watch Sesame Street. I'm sure tv is alright like everything else, in moderation. It's just that I see so many students with conditioned "ADD" or "ADHD" and they have lived a life of constant stimulation and non-stop entertainment.

I still have to set up my classroom and figure out how I'm going to teach my honors classes without textbooks. "Budget shortages" have forced my department to cut our budget from about $40k to $10k. The only books that I have available to teach with are standard textbooks from about 2000 which were written at about a 5th grade reading level. I'm gathering articles and pulling from multiple sources. As difficult as this may be, I'm actually excited about doing it this way. It's just that it would have been nice to have had this information about the shortage back in May.

As far as reading, I'm about to finish Neil Postman's, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman wrote the book about 20 years ago and argued that electronic media (he focused on tv) has conditioned us to expect to be entertained. If information is not presented in an entertaining fashion then the information is not worth receiving. He looks at contemporary journalism, education, and religion as forms of show business. He also argues that Huxley's vision from Brave New World is more relevant today than Orwell's nightmare. Orwell argued that, in the future, information will be kept from the people and that they would be controlled through pain. Huxley argued that the truth would be lost in a sea of irrelevance and that people would be controlled through endless pleasures, wants, and distractions.

I also picked up a comic book, er, graphic novel called the Pride of Baghdad. The guy who wrote it, Brian Vaughn, had also written Y: The Last Man which was amazing and Ex Machina which is pretty good. The Pride of Baghdad follows a pride of lions that had escaped from the Baghdad zoo during the American invasion of Iraq. Vaughn gave the animals voices and the story has broader meaning than just the wanderings of the animals. The art is incredible and the character development is outstanding.

Here is an entertaining clip from the Youtube Miracle: