Holy Crap

I like Netflix because they have an enormous variety of movies in stock and because, if you turn them around quickly, you can get a lot of movies for your monthly membership fee.
But (We saw that coming, didn't we?) they apparently don't want us to see Leni Reifenstahl's 1926 film "The Holy Mountain."
Here's how one reviewer described it on Amazon.com:

If you have never experienced the 1920s German genre of the mountain film, there is no better introduction than this. In fact it may be the only one you need unless you truly love the genre as most of the films are carbon copies of each other. What gives this film added interest is the debut of Leni Riefenstahl as a performer (and occasional director). Riefenstahl began her career as a dancer in the Isadora Duncan mold until a knee injury ended her career. Nevertheless she does a fair amount of dancing in this film especially in the beginning. While it may look somewhat silly today and Riefenstahl is far from the prototype of today's dancers, it is an excellent example of what Duncan's free form dancing was like and some of it is remarkably effective. Director Arnold Fanck wrote the screenplay in three days after being given a photo of Riefenstahl by co-star Louis Trenker and so began her brilliant and highly controversial career. The story (standard for this kind of film) is the classic love triangle with a lot of German mysticism about Man and Nature thrown in to give it "depth." The real star of the film is the stunning cinematography by Hans Schneeberger (how appropriate) and Sepp Allgeier. There are incredible shots of breathtaking beauty of mountain crags and vistas taken in what seem like impossible positions for a cameraman. The actors were really there and labored under the harsh conditions as recalled by Riefenstahl in a clip from a documentary which is also included (although professional climbers were used in the more harrowing sequences). I found myself engrossed by the obvious sincerity of the film despite the shallowness of the storyline. The print is in fairly good shape with the proper tinting restored which enhances the mountain scenes. The new musical score by Aljoscha Zimmerman strikes just the right balance between Classical and New Age depending on what the story requires. While certainly not a film that will appeal to everyone, it is worth seeing for the astonishing photography and for the young Riefenstahl who is radiant in her film debut.

The trouble started about four weeks ago when the red Netflix envelope arrived containing what I expected was The Holy Mountain. The white Tyvek DVD sleeve described synopsized the 1926 classic. But the disc inside was a completely different The Holy Mountain.
It was a bizarre surrealistic 1973 cult film of the same name by director Alejandro Jodorowski:
Here's what another Amazon.com reviewer wrote:

I watched this film with the Jodorowsky subtitled commentary track running and some of the stuff he says is absolutely hilarious, I mean there's no way even Andy Kaufman could have thought of this stuff.
"I want to change the world with film. I want to change the way people think." this one was pure gold. Is he sincerely that burned out and naive? Watching his films is like giving a camera to the homeless, toothless guy who rants and raves about Jesus having a UFO stashed in a garbage can behind a Dairy Queen in some remote Arizona town.
Art is entirely subjective, so with that in mind, this is the most hilarious attempt at surreal "art"; at trying to get the audience to open up to "another state of consciousness", (more gold from the burn out.)
And come on, how is this thing even remotely offensive? (I don't know, maybe it's because I'm an atheist) Oh man, THERE'S FLAMING JESUS POO!!!!! because it symbolizes this, and symbolizes that, and this symoblizes a monkey with a hippo in a pool and some black chick with whacky zany tattoos.
Please, nothing symbolizes anything, because nothing means anything.
Jodorowsky is a hack, plain and simple; get your spiritual garbage out of my universe, hippy.

So you can see the Jodorowsky film isn't exactly what we wanted. I went to the Netflix site and found the closest thing to getting a message to Netflix was to click a button indicating they sent the wrong movie. Then I put a Post-It note onto the DVD sleeve explaining their mistake and sent it back to Netflix in Salt Lake City. A few days later, the replacement arrrived from the Nexflix shipping facility in Houston. Again it was Jodorowski in a Riefenstahl sleeve.
I phoned Netflix and explained to the woman who answered what had happened. She vowed they would get it right.
Today's mail brought yet a third copy of The Holy Mountain - the Riefenstahl version this time.
But the disk is cracked and unplayable.
See what I mean?

Chuck E. Cheese's Outback Steakhouse

OK, call me a cranky old man.
I just like to enjoy a good meal in a restaurant with a minimum of annonyance and distraction.
Maria brought home a gift certificate for the local Outback Steakhouse yesterday and we decided to use it immediately.
Like many other restaurants in this "dry" county, Outback Steakhouse has two sections - one for the general non-drinking public and the other designated as a "private club" in which you pay a $5 annual membership fee and can have all of the beer, wine and liquor you can stand.
Since I enjoy a beer with my dinner, we opted for the club side, noticing that it was probably three or four times the size of the "public" part of the restaurant. It was a 20-25-minute wait for a table on the club side, while the wait was considerably shorter on the public side.
But I'm glad to wait longer if it means I don't have to dine with people who are OK with laws restricting my right to a beer with my dinner.
Shortly after being seated, we noticed the local "Balloon Lady" making funny hats, animals and other shapes from her pouch of balloons. She was working the big family tables across the aisle from us and her specialty seemed to be long balloon swords to put into the hands of young boys.
A few minutes later one family cleared out and were replaced by another group with four young boys. In short order, she outfitted each with a balloon sabre and guess what happened.
Yep.
The boys started dueling with each other from their seats, flailing away wildly.
Now, I expect that kind of crap at Chuck E. Cheese's where the basic premise is to let kids run amok. But it's not what I care to see when I'm dropping $50+ on a couple of dinners.
What the hell are they thinking, letting the Balloon Lady crank up the chaos?
To her great credit, one of the moms quickly confiscated the balloon swords, and order was restored.
So the Balloon Lady moved to the next table where she fashioned bizarre headpiece for a teenage boy who was celebrating his birthday with his family. That's when I shot this picture with my cell phone camera.
As far as the food went, Maria's steak was excellent. The three steamed lobster tails I ordered tasted like they had been too long out of the ocean and what should have been drawn butter was just melted butter, or maybe even margarine.
And both of my beers were only slightly below room temperature. I took the waiter up on his offer of a frosty mug, but he came back from the bar empty handed, explaining that all of the mugs just came out of the dishwasher and were still hot.
Whatever.

A challenge!!!!!

Maria and I challenge our friends/readers to scroll down to the "Preferences" blog post and enter their own preferences in the comments section.
And thanks to Shaylan for being the first!
Now, go do it.
(The picture of the dogs is just there to get your attention.)

Doreen

For those of us lucky enough to have memories of the 1950s, the name “Doreen” has a special significance. My friend Doreen is Doreen Tracey of the original Mickey Mouse Club.
Doreen has spent her entire life in the entertainment industry.
She was born April 13, 1943 to Sid and Bessie Tracey. The Traceys were vaudevillians entertaining the troops in England and Doreen was born in London.
The family returned to the States when she was four and moved to Hollywood, where Sid and vaudeville friend Ben Blue opened a place called Slappy Maxie on Wilshire Blvd.
In a move that would shape his young daughter's life, Sid also opened the Rainbow Dance Studio.
Growing up as a normal American little girl, Doreen had the advantage of an extended show business “family.” Her “Uncle Ben” Blue was a prominent fixture in her life and she lived with him for a time when her mother was hospitalized with tuberculosis and her father struggled to keep his business afloat. Jimmy Durante seized upon her childhood name of “Do-Do” and delighted in embarrassing her by announcing, “Look who's here – it's Sid's little DoDo bird!”
Growing up as an only child, her best buddy was her cat, Sylvester.
Doreen was answering the phone at the Rainbow Studios that fateful day when the call came from Lee Travers at Walt Disney Studios in early 1955 announcing the search for talented kids for the pilot of the Mickey Mouse Club.
She sang “Cross Over the Bridge” in a Little Bo-Peep costume for the initial audition in March.
One of the original Mouseketeers, Doreen remained with the show through its entire run.
After the Mickey Mouse Club ended, Doreen went to John Burroughs High School in Burbank where she fell in love with Robert Washburn. The two eloped to Tijuana and, a short time later, Doreen found herself pregnant with a son, Bradley Allen Washburn. The marriage was short-lived and Doreen soon became a single mother.
During the 1960s, she performed with the Andressi Brothers in Las Vegas and elsewhere and appeared on episodes of My Three Sons, Donna Reed and Day in Court.
She also toured Alaska and Vietnam with the USO. Her recollections of Vietnam landed her a job as a consultant on the film "Apocalypse Now!" where she contributed elements of the surfing-under-fire sequence.
Doreen fell out of grace with Walt Disney Studios in the mid-1970s when she did two nude photo layouts for Gallery magazine.
This photo is from the first of those photo shoots.
That's when I first made her acquaintance. About the same time as the first Gallery layout, writer Jerry Bowles published a where-are-they-now book about the Mouseketeers called Forever Hold Your Banner High. A press kit turned up on my desk at The Indianapolis News one day with a mail-back postcard to request phone interviews with Doreen and/or Jerry Bowles. I checked both boxes and, about a week later, found myself chatting with Doreen. We hit it off and have kept in touch ever since.
Since the Gallery flap, Doreen and the studios have been reconciled and she participated in a 40th anniversary special on the Mickey Mouse Club.
Doreen still lives in Burbank, a short distance from Burroughs High School and the Disney studios. Her son works in the equestrian industry.

Fire in the hole!

The Home Depot deals just keep coming!
We've been hankering for an outdoor fireplace/fire pit since we moved in, but either didn't like what we saw in the stores or didn't want to pay the asking price for what we did like.
Until this week.
Home Depot's sale insert in Thursday's newspaper touted the Hampton Bay Benedetto outdoor fireplace for a mere $99. The Home Depot website lists it for $299, so a $200 discount seemed like a decent deal. The insert said there was a limited number of them in stock and when we got there at noon yesterday they had two in boxes and one display model. We snarfed one of the two boxed units, jammed it into the back of the Subaru Forester and Maria brought it home when he came home from work last evening.
We worked on the assembly process for a couple of hours last night and I finished it up after lunch today. Looks good and, since it's sprinkling off and on today, I have it under its rain cover.
This crappy photo is from the Home Depot website. It looks a bit nicer in person.

Ho ho, Lolo

As the days grow longer and warmer, the siren call of the road grows louder and more distinct.
I haven't done a good, long road trip since the summer of 2004 when I did about a 2,000-mile ride that started with the BMW MOA rally in Spokane, Wash., and took me down the coast through Big Sur and back.
Yes, I rode to the 'MOA rally in Burlington, Vt., two years ago, but that was a quick out-and-back trip that was done in less than a week.
So it's my fervent hope that I can block out time this summer for a reasonably long ride. The 'MOA is in Gillette, Wyo. in July, so that may be a good start.
This photo is from July, 1998 when the 'MOA rally was in Missoula, Mont. I think it was on the Saturday of the four-day rally and some friends and I were stopped at the summit of Lolo Pass, west of Missoula. We'd left after breakfast and the air was still brisk as we rode up the pass. We paused to shed a layer of clothes before plunging into the next 77 delightful miles.

Herman Hoglebogle

Longtime friend and fellow Newsie Skip Hess sent me the obit of Jim Abrams this week. Jim worked on the copy desk of The Indianapolis News in the late '60s and early '70s. The obit mentioned that at various times Jim edited the Blue Streak (the paper's final edition Mon-Fri) and wrote the People in the News and the Herman Hoglebogle column.
Herman Hoglebogle was a cartoon character created by the late Tom Johnson and he was the face of The News when it came to complaining about chuckholes in streets and other such civic disgraces. We had a life-size plywood cutout of Herman, his face was featured on green Herman Hoglebogle buttons and he was the face of The Indianapolis News' Green Safety Flag program under which Indianapolis schools that had a clean safety record could fly the green banner from their flagpole.
One summer evening around 1969 or '70, David Rohn, Bob Basler and I kidnapped the Herman cutout and took him to my place for a night of drunken revelry. Here he is with a can of Budweiser taped to his mitt. That's me on the right, Rohn (who went on to a career as an editorial writer at The News) on the left, and Basler (who writes the Oddly Enough blog for Reuters) on the floor. If you look closely, you can see Rohn is lighting Herman's cigarette.

Gold!

The price of gold has been flirting with the $1,000/ounce mark - about $944/ounce today - and it has us eyeing some of the gold objects we don't have any particular attachment to.
Like my Delphi High School class ring and some other jewelry items.
Hmmmm.

My last wedding album

Now that I'm caught up on my Ebay packing and shipping, I'm back to work on the wedding album that should have been done seven months ago.
Maria and I shot a wedding on my birthday - July 14. Shortly after that, our lives were plunged into the chaos of relocation from Indiana to Arkansas, house hunting, moving, house selling, waiting for Lowe's to get the carpet right so we could set up our home office and on and on. So here it is, almost April and I'm finally nearing completion on the album.
The bride and her family have been extraordinarily gracious and patient, but I'm horribly embarrassed that it's taken so long to get this far.
I'm using MyPublisher to create a 100-page leather-bound album. MyPublisher is, in my judgment, still the premiere online photobook publisher. We've done several albums with them and have never been disappointed with the results.
Here are a couple of two-page spreads of the work in progress. Notice that with two shooters - one out front and the other behind the minister - you get better coverage of the kiss and other ceremony details.

Spring in the Mid-South

The temperature is a sunny 72 degrees and we had a pleasant lunch on the deck at BA (dunno what it stands for) Burrito on Southwest Drive. They have their own MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/baburrito, but give no clue to the "BA."
I doubt if it was this nice on the deck at Creekside in Crawfordsville today.

The "ultimate" digital camera for adventure travel

A friend who's planning a motorcycle trip to Alaska this summer emailed to ask for my recommendation for the "ultimate" digital camera for such an adventure. Here's my response:

If you're looking for a point-and-shoot, rather than a bulky SLR, I'm impressed with the Olympus Stylus 790SW and even more so with the Olympus Stylus 1030SW.
A young woman who is a bicycling fanatic living in Alaska has been using a 790 for a few months now and her blog http://arcticglass.blogspot.com/ is a good showcase for what the 790 will do.
Both cameras are over-engineered in terms of their ability to stand up to abuse. The 790 can take a drop from 5 feet, survive down to 10 feet underwater and function as cold as 14 degrees. The 1030 is even more robust, droppable from 6.6 feet, submersible down to 33 feet, freezeproof to 14 degrees and crushproof up to 220 pounds. Both have image stabilization. The 790 takes 7.1 megapixel images and the 1030 is a 10.1 megapixel camera.
The 790 lists for $299.99 but I found it as cheap as $232 on Amazon.com. The 1030's MSRP is $399.99, but you can get it as cheap as $365.99 on Amazon.com.
Considering the occasion, I'd spend the extra bucks and get the 1030.
Oh, yeah. They also shoot movies.

Preferences

We all have our preferences when it comes to the everyday things in life, something that occurred to me this morning when I replaced the toilet paper roll in the master bathroom.
So here are some of mine:
Toilet paper orientation: over
Eggs: over light
Coffee: dark(est) roast with 2 packs of Sweet & Low and a touch of hazelnut Coffeemate
Shaving lather: shaving soap, mug and brush
Steak: medium well
Grits: no thanks
Jelly for toast: strawberry
Beer: the darker the better (Spaten Optimator is my fave)
Coke or Pepsi: Coke (Zero)
Smoking or non: non-smoking
Table or booth: booth
Blondes or brunettes: brunettes
Mac or PC: PC
Zune or iPod: iPod
Early or late-riser: early - 6 a.m. or earlier
Part in hair: on the right
XM or Sirius: XM
Windows version: XP SP2
MySpace or Facebook: Facebook
iTunes or Amazon.com MP3 store: Amazon.com
Fast food: Wendy's
Credit or debit: credit
Side of the bed: left (as viewed from the foot)
Cable or satellite: cable
Shower gel or soap: gel
Lease or buy cars: buy
Barack or Hillary: John McCain
Tax Cut or TurboTax: Tax Cut
Ballpoint or rollerball: rollerball
Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction

Shipping

Waiting for the Brookland Postoffice to reopen after lunch so I can ship 9 Ebay sales.

Arkansas high-rise

Indiana BMW motorcycle rider friend Dave Bernhardt sends this photo of a redneck high-rise apartment complex.

Happy Easter

Safe-cracking by email

We drove to Tyronza, Ark., yesterday to visit the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum for a quilt exhibition and a dose of local history.
The museum's exhibits include a safe from the Burdette Plantation, a cotton plantation in the area. It was donated to the museum but, since the combination had been lost and there were still presumably plantation records and who knows what else inside the safe, the Burdette heirs retained ownership of the contents.
There have been several heavy handed attempts over the years to force the safe open, resulting in the loss of the latch handle and deformation of the combination wheel.
I took a particular interest in it because I noticed it was made by the Schwab Safe Co. of Lafayette, Ind. I grew up in Delphi, 18 miles from Lafayette, and my late father had a Schwab safe in his insurance agency.
Realizing that Schwab is still in business, I fired off an email this morning to their tech support people asking if they could help the museum folks open the safe. I figured there's an outside chance they still have the combination somewhere in their records, or at least might have some suggestions. For all I know, this has already been tried, but as an expatriate Hoosier, I felt compelled to help.
I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

'57 T-bird

At Cracker Barrel.

Richter Scales video

This probably only makes sense to geeks and dot-com people, so I guess that's who I am. Anyway, I thought it was funny and clever as hell.

Happy birthday, Dad

My father, who died in November, 1997, would have been 98 years old today.

Ruthie's spring haircut

Ruthie is home from her beauty appointment at Petco and seems to be pleased with how she looks and smells.
She rode home with her head out of the car window - something she's never done before - and rolled around in the back yard.
Pete noticed the change right away and followed her around, sniffing curiously and eyeing her suspiciously.

AsSense makes $ense

If you're new to my blog or haven't visited for awhile, you'll notice I now have advertising. I signed up for Google's AdSense program and I recommend it to anyone who wants to monetize their blog or website.
(BTW, I just noticed that the spellcheck feature on Blogger recognizes neither "blog" nor "Blogger" nor "spellcheck." How weird is that?)
Anyway, when you sign up for AdSense and create an account with them, you get some HTML code to embed in your site. That makes it possible for AdSense to insert small ad links that are presumably related to the content of your most recent posts. You get paid surprisingly well whenever a visitor to your blog or site clicks on one of these links whether that click results in a purchase or not. Once your account accumulates more than $100, Google AdSense starts paying out. You can have them do a direct deposit to your bank account or put it into your Paypal account.
Consequently, I've come to regard the advertisers who have links here as my sponsors. So I would be very grateful if you would support my sponsors and see what they have to offer.

Park Avenue

This is one of my favorite images of the West. It's a spot in Arches National Park called Park Avenue and I shot it on a photo safari Maria and I did a few years ago. We got there late in the day and had the benefit of the beginning of the golden light of late afternoon. I used a polarizing filter to darken the sky and crank up the color saturation.
I think I'm about ready to do some traveling.

Whatever became of Jim White?

This is Jim White, an ATO Fraternity brother of mine. The photo was taken in the spring of 1967 on the cusp of the Summer of Love. The scene was a "be-in" in Dunn Meadow on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington.
Jim was a math major and graduated from Indiana State University with a 4.0 gpa, or close to it. A few months later he took off for San Francisco with another friend of ours. I would have gone with them, were I not newly married with my first son on the way and the beginnings of a career in newspapers.
Whitey, as we called him, was a trusting, adventurous soul who was made for the 1960s. He would take any pill anyone would offer him, just to see what it did. After a year or two in California, he took up with a traveling commune called The Family. When he returned to Indiana, it was with a copy of Ankh, a nudist magazine with a lavish layout about The Family. And there was Whitey in several photos, in the altogether with his arms around one or two or more similarly naked young women. I thought it was very cool at the time. Come to think of it, I still think it's cool.
I lost track of Jim for several years until one night he called to say he was back in town. It was the winter of 1986-87 and I was living in an apartment in Carmel. He had come home for Christmas with his father, who lived in the same apartment complex.
Whitey, it turned out, had been living on the beach - homeless - in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He had no particular plans, other than to get back to his spot on the beach. He would have been 42 or so at the time. That was more than 20 years ago and I haven't heard from him since. I have no idea what became of him or whether he's still alive.
In the circus of life, Whitey was a trapeze artist who worked without a net. I'm not sure what I am. Maybe one of the guys who puts up the tent or shovels elephant shit. I have a feeling that Whitey has had more adventures than I, but I wonder how many of them he can remember.

flickr image dump

I finally got around to doing something with the flickr account I signed up for long long ago.
The free account is limited to 200 images, so I've got a mix of motorcycling, family and HDR stuff there. Feel free to check it out here.

Hauling ass around the yard

Pete loves to pester Ruthie until she chases him all over the yard. It's clear that both dogs thoroughly enjoy the game.
Ruthie has a hair appointment tomorrow morning to get her spring buzzcut. So this will serve as the "before" shot.

New links!

You 'll notice that I've added substantially to my list of Cool Blogs & Other Stuff over there on the right side of the page.

Here's some of what's new:

Box of Slides and Swapatorium are cool sites featuring photographic images and other stuff that turns up at auctions.

Epodunk is a very handy site to get information on practially every population center in the U.S.

Recent Central U.S. Earthquakes is where I go to scare myself

Up In Alaska is the blog of a young woman who is a bicycling fanatic in Alaska

Wal-Mart Associates' Journal is a forum for Wal-Mart employees and often has hilarious stories about customer behavior

And John Chow Dot Com is the blog of John Chow, who has turned his blog into a spectacular source of income. He started with AdSense in September 2006 and made $352.94 that first month. He made a fulltime job of researching online moneymaking possibililties involving advertising and kept adding to his site. Last month (February, 2008) he made $29,643.01. He's written a book on how to monetize your blog and you can get it for free in pdf form from his website. He is a world class authority on how to make your online presence work for you.

Just playing

They look fierce, but Pete and Ruthie are just playing and enjoying a warm sunny morning.

Medical emergency

Maria's son is en route to the Crawfordsville hospital ER because he and/or his girlfriend think he may have appendicitis.
Stay tuned for more drama.
********************
After several hours of tests and waiting, the doctors determined it's a virus, not appendicitis. So we can all relax.

Hello, Spring

According to an online ephemeris, Spring begins at 5:58 a.m. tomorrow, GMT. Corrected to local Arkansas time, that's 12:58 a.m. tomorrow. Not a moment too soon.

A little feedback, please

I've added some ads to the blog - at least Blogger says they're there. I can see them if I use Safari or Firefox, but they aren't showing up when I use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, which is the most commonly used browser.
WTF?
Please take a moment to click the Comment thing and let me know if you can see them and what browser you're using.
Thanks.

Rough weather

Tornado warnings, sirens and torrential rain. There were funnel cloud sightings all over the place and a lot of north central Arkansas got flooded, but we did fine. Or fahn, as the locals say it.

Maria's K75S

This was last Tuesday, when I just had to take the bike out to keep the battery up.

Crunching numbers

We've been eating at home more and less in restaurants since we bought our gas grill about three weeks ago and guessed we were saving money.
Turns out we are.
Since we started grilling on Feb. 24, we've had a 38.9 percent ($8.10) reduction in average daily restaurant expenses. Our daily average for groceries has gone up by 20.1 percent ($2.91), so we're actually saving $5.19 a day.
This, of course, does not take into account the cost of the grill, propane used and electricity saved. It will be hard to make a propane/electricity comparison since our electric bill covers everything else in the house, including heating and cooling. But at $5/day the grill will have paid for itself by April 14. So unless the price of propane goes completely nuts, this will turn out to be pretty good for our cash flow.
Oh, yeah. There's also the savings in transportation costs - gas, oil, tires, etc. - by not running out to a restaurant every other night.
The downside is nights like last night when I overcooked the burgers. When I brought them in the first time, they were underdone. When they came in the second time, they weren't quite hockey pucks, but they were damned well done.

Going commercial

You'll notice a change in the layout this morning.
That's because I'm fiddling with the HTML code to include Google AdSense stuff. Yes, I'm adding advertising as a means of monetizing the old blog.
I've noticed the number of hits has risen sharply in the last few months and it occurred to me that by adding subject-related ads, I might make it possible for my readers to find stuff they'll be interested in and, at the same time, make this project start to pay for itself.
Until I get everything sorted out, though, the sidebar listings of recommended friends' sites and archival stuff may or may not appear where they're supposed to be, or may not appear at all.
Trust that I'm aware of it and I'm working on the problem.

No green for me today

This is St. Patrick's Day, but I just can't work up any enthusiasm for the occasion.
I haven't found much to admire in the Irish - particularly the IRA - since Aug. 27, 1979, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army blew him and his boat to smithereens.
Mountbatten was Prince Charles' great uncle and mentor and was a genuine World War II war hero and was the last Viceroy of India, overseeing the transition to independence of India and Pakistan.
His murder was an act of terrorism, plain and simple.

Alternative fuel

The rising gasoline prices have most of us thinking about alternative fuels and it called to mind this propane-fueled BMW motorcycle I saw at the 1990 BMW MOA National Rally in Rapid City, S.D.
I never got a chance to meet the owner and ask the obvious questions about fuel efficiency and availability and how hard it was to convert. As far as finding a cheaper fuel is concerned, I don't think propane would be any better than gasoline since propane costs have skyrocketed right along with oil in the last few years.
But it's an interesting experiment and begs the question of what happens if the bike goes down at speed and you mix a ruptured propane tank with a shower of sparks.
Then there's that clunky spraypaint pinstripe job on the gas tank...

Raphael in Amishland

I finally got around to listing my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume on Ebay yesterday. No bids yet, but I can't imagine this fabulous item going unsold. You can check it out here.
That's me in the costume in the Ebay listing, but the photo above is my stepson Austin in the costume at his cousin Isaac's 5th birthday party.
Isaac, his six brothers and sisters and his parents - and the dog too, I suppose - are Amish. Considering that the Ninja Turtles were popular in the 1980s and that Isaac and his family don't watch TV, all of the popular nuances of Raphael and his compadres were completely lost on the kid. Nevertheless, he seemed pleased and amused to see a big-ass masked turtle show up on his birthday and was even more pleased to discover it was Austin under that goofy suit.
Speaking of goofy suits, I'm reminded of Chris Biddlecombe, aka Cookie Monster, who used to show up at BMW motorcycle rallies in a Cookie Monster suit.
Here's a photo I shot of him in the camping area of the 1990 BMW Motorcycle Owners of America national rally in Rapid City, S.D. That's a BMW R100CS he's riding.
Cookie, as most of us know him, is a longtime member of the Indianapolis BMW Club, but lived the last several years in Huntsville, Ala. Local BMW rider Charlie Parsons told me over the weekend he had heard Cookie moved back to Indiana. I assume he still has the fuzzy blue suit, but I haven't seen it in years.
Tim Balough suggested recently that I pick up where Cookie left off and wear the Ninja Turtle suit at rallies. It's an intriguing thought, but the thing is just too bulky to carry on a bike in addition to my usual camping gear and other stuff. (I'm using a 30x18x18 box to ship it once the Ebay auction closes and there's no freaking way I'd lash something that big on the back of my bike.)

The elephant in the room

Late last week before the more inflammatory sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced, the retiring pastor of Barack Obama's home church was being attacked for having the temerity to suggest that white people have an advantage over blacks in the United States.
I was struck by the absurdity of the outcry over Rev. Wright stating the obvious. We have apparently become so obsessed with political correctness that we have to express outrage and shock when someone publicly states an obvious, albeit uncomfortable, fact of political life.
The same kind of silly PC-driven logic obtained earlier in the week when former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro opined that Obama would not be a strong contender for his party's nomination for president were he white. Her remark was informed by her belief that she would never have been a VP nominee if she had been a man. And she is almost certainly right on both counts.
The fact - like it or not - is that race and gender are still factors in American politics. The media acknowledges this every time they break down the candidates' constituencies along gender and racial lines.
Wright unquestionably crossed the line when he started jabbering about the U.S.K.K.K. of A. and "God damn America," but in asserting that blacks are at a political and social advantage in America, all he did was name the elephant in the room. We all wish it were not so, and I like to think it is much less so today than when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s. We're moving toward a fairer and more just society, but we're not quite there yet and we do everyone a disservice by pretending that we're reached that goal.

Oooooo! A coveted Purple Star.

In my effort to turn clutter into cash and get more space in our garage for things that actually belong in a garage - like cars and motorcycles - I reached a milestone this week with Ebay.
My career feedback count topped the 500 mark, all of them positive, and Ebay emailed me a Purple Star certificate. How nice.

Wonky software

My Windows Live Writer software - the program I usually use to write blog entries and post them - has gone wonky today and won't upload any posts that have images in them.

I'm using it to create this post, so it works fine with text.

I contacted their support people and, after submitting my description of the problem, was told, "Your Support Ticket Number: 1061535906,"

So this is my record of that exchange.

In the meantime, I'll just have to post pics from my phone or through the regular Blogger dashboard page.

Ewwwwww!

Here I am with fellow Indianapolis BMW Club member Greg Miller at the Iowa Rally back in the 1990s.
And that's the guest of honor at the hog roast wearing my hat.

Happy Birthday, Lauri!

Why does he have a weasel on his head?

Democrat Pat Bauer, speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, sports one of the worst hairpieces ever seen in Indiana politics.

Too good not to share

Hey, look! It's Gaylene!

Everyone is instantly on a first-name basis with this Miata driver.

Schneesturm

The snow stopped around 10 p.m. yesterday and this morning dawned clear and bright. The storm system deposited about 3" of the "White Death," as the local radio station was hyping it, at our place  between Goobertown and Buck Snort.

So when I went out to get the morning paper, I took my camera and shot a bunch of HDR (High Definition Resolution) images. Here are four of them.

Nearly all of the snow had melted by 2 p.m. That's how it works here in Arkansas.

Refrigerator door art

This is my granddaughter Lisa's painting of a jungle. Steve emailed it to me this afternoon and I immediately made a color printout and stuck it on the refrigerator door with a magnet.

Yep. Looks like a jungle to me.

The sky is falling!

 

At least that's how the locals see it. They've been fretting over a paralyzing snowstorm for nearly a week and the flakes finally started falling around mid-morning.

As of 5 p.m., we have maybe 2 inches on the ground - a non-event in Indiana, but  a major crisis in Northeast Arkansas where both of the county snowplows are poised to spring into action. Maria was supposed to make a presentation tomorrow at a high school journalism program on the ASU campus, but it has been called off. Of course. The local TV station was listing school and other closings this morning before the first trace of snow.

There's no wind to speak of, so there won't be any drifting. And with a forecast high of 51 on Sunday, it should all be gone within 48 hours.

Pete and Ruthie are frolicking in the snowy back yard and probably wishing for the chin-high (for dogs) snows of yesteryear in Indiana.

Last weekend's assault on the pile-o-stuff in the garage has resulted in a couple of improvements in our quality of life, even if the garage still won't accommodate a car.

I found and assembled our home theatre sound system, linking it with our new Sharp Aquos 42" LCD TV with an 8' fiber optic cable. I haven't figured out a suitable way to run wires under the carpet or around the walls for the two rear speakers, so at present it's running with the subwoofer, center, right and left channels. Even so, it sounds a helluva lot better than the stereo speakers on the TV and significantly improves the experience.

Our other deficit involved telephones and a decent answering system.

The AT&T package we got does not include voicemail. However, I finally located the base station for a two-phone Panasonic system that we'd used in Thorntown. I found the satellite phone early on, but it was useless without the base station. The base station also has an answering machine built in - a feature I'd forgotten about because we never used it in Thorntown. That's because our phone service there included voicemail, which we sometimes forgot to check for days on end. That shouldn't be a problem now, since the base station and the two handsets have lights that blink when there are pending messages.

So now we have the base station in the living room next to the couch and the satellite unit on Maria's bedside table. A stand-alone phone Maria bought when she lived in an apartment from mid-September to mid-October lives in a guest room and my headset is on my desk in the upstairs office.

So now it's practically impossible to miss the telephone solicitation calls that we haven't been able to block. I get at least two calls a day from automated calling systems trying to sell me an extended warranty for our cars or offering low-interest mortgages. I also get at least a half-dozen calls a week from people trying to reach the folks who had our phone number before it was assigned to us. I stopped being polite weeks ago, especially when it's clear that it's a business calling.

We were spoiled in Indiana because our home state had an excellent no-call system that shielded us from telephone solicitation to the point that we forgot what an annoyance it is.

So with a decent TV sound system and our phones properly deployed for the first time since we moved in nearly five months ago, I feel a little less off-balance and more settled.

In the meantime, I've been selling stuff on Ebay to do what I can to turn unwanted clutter into cash. I sold a half-dozen items from my bloated stein collection this week and plan to list more stuff in the next day or two.

I'm a very patient guy

An iPod and The Who Live In Indianapolis makes a shoe-shopping expedition to Dillard's bearable.
Listening to a great version of My Generation and wishing for lunch.

Killed by cell phones

Waiting for the Jonesboro Post Office to open this morning, I noticed that a couple of pay phones have been removed. Not much demand for them these days.