Favre and the Horny Helmets won today

As did the Packers.

Favre connected on a 60 yard bomb to Rice (was it?) that was incredibly impressive.

Oh! I said I put up a couple pix to show how things are going at Mom's house.

Well, here's the bunch I brought out trick or treating:



Quite the cute bunch, aren't they?




Here's Mom and the family:












And, Fall in Muskogee:

Check out what the Krauts call a Handbook

Build a better mousetrap...

We have, of late, had the opportunity to test several different types of mousetraps. Sticky-traps work well, but I think the mice, since the boards don't silence the victims immediately, learn to avoid them. And, if the mouse is strong enough, it can work its way off if you don't get there quickly and mash the mouse into the glue. (Wear a glove. Then, also, you have to drown them, brutally. A most personal proceeding.) We've caught over a dozen of the little effers with those.

We tried these plastice live-traps, but they caught nothing. Though the bait paste they came with does seem to draw mice when you use it with another type of trap. The old-fashioned snappy kind of trap silences them immediately, but doesn't always go off, and somehow they don't seem drawn to them.

The one that's working best is a slight modification of the old-fashioned trap which has a plastic bait holder that holds the jaw well, yet is somehow more sensitive than the old, metal type.

This one, right here.

I thought of a little ditty while showering up after the long

July 4th weekend:

Bug bites and sunburns and duck-poop-caused itchin'
Long weeds and deadfalls and Mom-in-Law's bitchin'
Patching the rooves that hail damaged last Spring
These are the truths of our lake cabin dreams.

All right, a couple lines were tortured into to place to fit the rhyme and meter. We didn't have any rooves to fix this time around. But I'm not quite clear on why they need to remove deadfalls from the woods. Not that it isn't fun to play with chainsaws.

Oh, and I actually like my mom-in-law quite a bit. So, sorry about that one, Mom. But...you know...stereotypes...rhyme schemes...

I went to the shrink today

I'm saying this back here because I'm a chickenshit. Man, I behave like a spoiled baby! What part of me wanted to sick Molyneux and Ron on each other? What the hell was that?

As to the therapy session, I just blatted all my fears and worries and guilts all over the guy. I couldn't get 'em all in in one hour, actually. Basically that was just the poor sod's introduction to me.

I diagnosed myself as a narcissist. He said we'd talk about that next time.

I'm still not quite clear on how the payment for this works.

Here's something philistinish

The song, "Love is the Answer," has been running through my mind a lot for the last month or so. It came to mind first when I was watching this 9-11 Truther on YouTube, though then it was ironic (my intention in singing it), because the guy was pushing some kind of New Age religion. Now that I'm checking out Stefan Molyneux, though, it keeps coming back.

It's late. Remind me to dig up some links for you. OK, I found some, though I still have to get the YouTube links. And work in Alice Miller while I'm at it. Molyneux talks about her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, which I haven't been able to find at the local bookstores, new or used, but I think she may just have said the most important thing she has to say right here. I mean, important for you and me, right now.

Here are the lyrics (edited by me):
LOVE IS THE ANSWER
England Dan & John Ford Coley

Name your price
A ticket to paradise
I can't stay here any more
And I've looked high and low
I've been from shore to shore to shore
If there's a short cut I'd have found it
But there is no easy way around it

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all
Set us free
Love is the answer

Who knows why
Someday we all must die
We're all homeless boys and girls
And we are never heard
It's such a lonely, lonely, lonely world
People turn their heads
And walk on by
Tell me is it worth just another try

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all
Set us free
Love is the answer

Are we alive
Or just a dying planet
What are the chances
Ask the man in your heart for the answers

And when you feel afraid
Love one another
When you've lost your way
Love one another
And when you're all alone
Love one another
And when you're far from home
Love one another
And when you're down and out
Love one another
And when your hopes run out
Love one another
And when you need a friend
Love one another
And when you're near the end
We got to love one another

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all
Set us free
Love is the answer

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all
Set us free
Love is the answer

For some reason, they've got Todd Rundgren singing it here.

Here's my cat

The pic's from last Christmas, but I was just digging through the old files and I thought this was a great one. That's me she's sitting on. She won't sit on anyone else.

They're starting the creative round of layoffs at work.

They didn't get me on this round, but it's early yet. I noticed some preliminary leading indicators of an upswing coming (I forget what, I just remember having the thought - somebody's buying something or other). But it all depends on how the gov't - intentionally or not - screws things up.

The Mises guys are predicting hyperinflation.

Well! We can get on with that bourgeois lifestyle, then!

My piece of the stimulus bill:

wireless and broadband deployment grant programs

(including transfer of funds to Al Erkkila for the Al Erkkila Personal Economic Stimulus Program)

For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $365,000,000 shall be paid directly to Al Erkkila in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Al Erkkila to retire to the Bahamas or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Al Erkkila will receive free Green Bay Packers tickets for life. Provided Even Further Still, That Al Erkkila shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Barney Frank is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

H/T Mr. Pt.

Get yours here.

Recent pix of the kids

I was just going through the picture files and found a good one of Rosie back at Christmas in Mom's kitchen:





And here's Aliina celebrating the first nice day of the year. I call it Scotch Scarlett:

I made a slide show video with Media Maker last night.

They're just stills of my nieces wedding. I posted some of the pictures before, but let's try this anyway.

So that's my first video editing effort (ever).

I also made my first powerpoint presentation ever, tonight. If I can figure out how to post that here, I will. I just jumbled a lot of crap together, so it ain't no great shakes.

I wanted to make my own video, but I can't figure out how to connect my video camera to my computer. In fact, in the directions, it says it might not work. That's kinda discouraging.

Update: She had a baby the other day! They named him Mitchell.

It's a deep expression of love, respect and support for a family member who's having a hell of a bad time.

It made me cry.

New movies you say?

Just so you don't get your hopes up, I'll list the flix first, so you can decide whether you really want to keep reading:

UHF
Dodgeball
Madagascar II
The Penguins of Madagascar

And last weekend we got

I am Legend
Minority Report and
Shenandoah

Did I say "new"? I meant new to me. I'll try to give each one at least three sentences:

UHF: I'd seen it on cable back when we had it. I didn't expect much from it; I figured it'd be dumb, but I laughed out loud quite a lot. Weird Al isn't much of a dramatic actor but he writes some funny stuff. The whole is better than the separate clips available on YouTube. I bought it because my daughter had been watching those.

It came double packed with

Dodgeball: I figured, "What the hell! People talked about it quite a bit, and it's cheap. Why not?" The old geezer coach (Rip Torn! Of all people!) cracked me up. And if that's not Ben Stiller's natural personality (God, I hope not!), he's one of the best actors of our generation.

The chick's hot, too.

You'll notice that I got Madagascar II and Penguins together as well (you can't be bourgeois if you're not cheap). I'm going to cheat and review them together as well. Hilarious, the lot of 'em. I don't know who Danny Jacobs is, other than the voice of King Julien, but there's another guy (along with Stiller) who's not afraid to make a complete jackass of himself for the sake of art.

The wife gave me I am Legend and Minority Report for Valentine's Day. [I love you too, Hunny Bunny!] Both of them deserve more than three sentences, but I'm lazy, so:

I am Legend: I suppose everybody knows by now that this is a repriese of the same story The Omega Man is based on. This one's a touch better, though I think Charlton Heston did a heckuva job on the older move. Will Smith is a mere five years younger than I am, (plus one month and eleven days, ignoring the two leap days)... He's 40, man! Close enough to my age, all right!?

Unfortunately, since the kids were watching it with me, I had to downplay the scary parts.

Minority Report: good action/adventure. Interesting special effects. Up there with Cruise's Mission Impossible.

Does that count as three sentences? Three fragments? It deserves better, but...well, you know.

Is it saving the best for last to put Shenandoah here? It's probably the deepest story, though there was a fair amount of schlock in it. Anderson is a very sympathetic character to me, but...didn't Sheridan burn that whole valley to the ground in 1864? They went a little easy on the Yanks, if you ask me.

But I enjoyed the speech.

Well, I didn't do anything this weekend

I slept all day Saturday (after I took down the Christmas tree and hauled it out to the curb). Today I went to church, then I watched the Arizona Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburg Steelers beat the Baltimore Ravens. During the commercials I watched my new DVD Nietzsche and the Nazis.

Kelley Ross has written a review of it, Nietzsche and the Nazis, with some strong arguments against Dr. Stephen Hicks' "personal view," which inspired me to get the DVD and view it for myself.

Here's Ross' conclusion:

Hicks is confused enough about morality that he agrees with Nietzsche on the "slave revolt," and this serves to vindicate the influence, which he mentions himself, that Nietzsche had on Ayn Rand. This merely serves to illuminate the failings and oversights of Randite ethics. Nietzsche and the Nazis would be much better if Hicks were not carrying water for the peculiarities of Ayn Rand's own defense of liberalism and capitalism. By apparently agreeing with Nietzsche's denigration of Jewish and Christian compassion and charity, Hicks in truth burdens his case for freedom, democracy, liberalism, and capitalism with a weakness that the enemies of all these, today principally on the Left (but also in Islamic Fascism), have never hesitated to exploit. Politically, leftist rhetoric is still, even in America, much more pervasive and effective than any defense of the free market or private property.

Nevertheless, despite these tendentious weaknesses, and the peculiarity of its structure, Nietzsche and the Nazis is a valuable and, on the whole, impressive work. That Nietzsche was not an individualist and that the Nazis were socialists are points that seriously need arguing against other admirers of Nietzsche, on the former point, and against those who, on the latter point, promote the leftist interpretation of fascism as a form of capitalism. Hicks does this all effectively, even as he performs the valuable historical service of preserving and expounding what the ideology of the Nazi regime actually was, and the reasons why a great many Germans really supported it. We should not forget that the eugenics movement in the United States was not completely discredited until it was obvious what the Nazis had done, faithfully, with such ideas. At the same time, the attraction of Nietzsche for Stephen Hicks himself is evidence for the thesis that intellectually serious people, whether Nazis or not, can believe this stuff.

Emphases and links are in the original.

I must say, I didn't find the Randian touches particularly disagreeable, but, then, I've been tempering my Objectivism with Ross's insights for a number of years now. I won't feel very qualified to argue against Dr. Ross until I finally get around to finishing one of Kant's books - or, rather, several. The impression I got of Kant from my college course on him (called Romanticism and Alienation, and it wasn't exclusively about Kant, we also surveyed Fichte, Hegel, Schilling and some other German Idealists - my paper was, more or less, "Fichte and the Nazis"; I think I got a B- on it)...

Oops! Digression!

Anyway, my impression of Kant from that class was that he deserved both barrels of what Ayn Rand fired at him. It is Ross who got me to reconsider. The trouble is, I'd rather read Ross than Kant or Schopenhauer.

I know that the points Ross goes on about in his review, even with his forewarning, aren't ones in which I feel much of a personal stake, so I found it difficult to get as worked up over them as he did when I watched the movie (the first time, without the football games). I've read four books on Hitler, including Mein Kampf and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and thirty or fourty on World War II, visited Dachau, stayed for two and a half weeks with a former SS soldier and been otherwise inundated with information about that epoch... You'd think I'd be tough to impress on that subject... But I was impressed with Hicks' presentation of the similarities and differences between Naziism and Nietzsheanism.

And, of course, I am interested in the comparison of Hicks' achievement with my own.

Update: Aha! Now I see a bit more clearly.