The only thing about "Bareback Mountin' " I intend to post

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is slamming NBC's Gene Shalit because Shalit has (gasp!) said he doesn't think that the new film Brokeback Mountain is all that good.

You know: "the gay cowboy movie". Now, I have no intention of seeing Brokeback Mountain - ever - but I know some people who have. People I happen to trust quite a bit. And as one of them put it, if Brokeback Mountain had been about anything but the homosexual relationship between two cowboys, it would not have been that big a deal. But that one thing has become the point about which the entire movie is now being labelled as "groundbreaking" and "revolutionary". And now, as evidenced by GLAAD's response to Gene Shalit, if a person does not buy into that and furthermore disagrees that Brokeback Mountain is a good movie, this somehow equates that person with being prejudiced against homosexuals.

Admittedly, I happen to believe that there's a lot of things very wrong with homosexuality. For a lot of reasons too complex to adequately detail in the time I'm wanting to give to this. To me it all boils down to whether the concept of love is something that can be defined by physical expression at all. Oh yes there's definitely acts of love we express to others, like hugging and kissing, and things beyond that... but can love itself be framed within the context of sensual pleasure for sake of that pleasure and still be considered to be true love? The act of deepest physical love is one where both participants simultaneously yield to and receive from one another... but how can there possibly be something beyond mere carnality when that act is either only one of giving or receiving?

Like I said, my take on this is really, really complex. And I'm not the kind of Christian who is going to condemn to Hell anyone that I happen to meet who's doing this: Lord knows I've done enough things in my life - none of which even approached this kind of behavior, by the way - that would readily condemn myself. But neither should people like those at GLAAD condemn someone for the weak infraction of not believing that Brokeback Mountain is a very good movie. If someone is willing to say that this film is wrong, that's their right. If another is willing to be so bold as to point out that the biggest reason this movie is being called a success in some quarters is that it relies too heavily on the concept of gay love between cowboys, then that's my right to do that too.

What it all comes down to is this: is Brokeback Mountain that strong a movie to stand on its own without relying on the crutch of a novel gimmick? Just going by what I've seen so far, there doesn't seem to be that much faith in the film without regarding that.

I don't really care to spend seven bucks watching gay cowboys "go at it"... so what else is there in this movie that would make it worth my money?

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No encore, please!

The world's longest-running concert is underway in Halberstadt, Germany, as the second chord has sounded in a performance of John Cage's "organ2/ASLSP".

The performance is not scheduled to finish until the year 2639!

From the article:

Second chord sounds in world's longest lasting concert
Thu Jan 5, 11:12 AM ET

HALBERSTADT, Germany (AFP) - A new chord was scheduled to sound in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert that is taking a total 639 years to perform.

The abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany, is the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by US experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992).

Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.

The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord -- G-sharp, B and G-sharp -- not sounding until February 2, 2003.

Then in July 2004, two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded and are scheduled to be released later this year on May 5.

But at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Thursday, the first chord was due to progress to a second -- comprising A, C and F-sharp -- and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project.

Cage originally conceived "ASLSP" in 1985 as a 20-minute work for piano, subsequently transcribing it for organ in 1987.

But organisers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to take the composer at his word and stretch out the performance for 639 years, using Cage's transcription for organ.

The enormous running time was chosen to commemorate the creation of Halberstadt's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361 -- 639 years before the current project started...

Hey it could be worse: project organizers could have chosen to perform Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida" instead!

(By the way, composer John Cage did a lot of weird stuff, the music-historian who is my wife has just informed me. His "4'33" was especially laughed about in college, she said: a three-movement piece comprised of four and a half minutes... of dead silence!)

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Best frozen pizza I've ever eaten

My Mom has been getting a lot of good food from Schwan's. She finds what she'd like to order from the Schwan's catalog, tells the deliveryman what she wants and gets her new order when he comes back around two weeks later. Lisa and I have been "ordering" through her and getting incredibly delicious stuff like chicken alfredo, potato skins, shrimp scampi, and some darned great ice ceam. Well last night I had their regular-sized pepperoni pizza (I think it's item #901) and I gotta tell ya: this is bar-none the best frozen pizza I've ever tasted in my entire life. Everything about it, from the crust (lightly dusted with cornmeal) to the sauce - maybe the best sauce I've had on a pizza anywhere - is just darned perfect. It puts most restaurant pizzas that I've experienced to shame. If nothing else it must be said that it does not taste like it's a frozen product at all. Schwan's also sells the same pizza in one-person servings, in boxes of six. Can't recommend this highly enough. If you appreciate a good pizza and wanna try real gourmet eating for a very good price, give Schwan's a try.

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The Ice Storm... ten years later

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of the 1996 blizzard/ice storm that paralyzed much of the East Coast. Can't believe it's been that long. In this area it was really two storms: one that covered the place in ice and snow and then a second one hit a few days later with much more ice. There wasn't nearly as much precipitation as there'd been in the Storm of the Century three years earlier (I doubt anything I'll ever live to see will be comparable to that) but it still ended up being a major nuisance for everyone affected by it.

The thing I remember most about the storm was that it forced me to move into my first apartment much sooner than I'd expected. I was taking a winter-term history class at Elon and my new roomie was off in London for the entire month: nobody was in the apartment and the last roommate had owned most of the furniture, so the place was really bare. Well, during the first storm I wound up staying one night in my old dorm room, made the very careful drive back home the next afternoon and heard that a second storm was on its way. I figured the logical thing to do was to hole up in the apartment a lot sooner than anticipated, so I'd be close to campus if we had class the next day. So I packed up a sleeping bag, a lamp, some books, and the TV/VCR combo I'd gotten for Christmas - and a few other essentials - into the car and headed for my new digs. I got the car unpacked and headed out to find food and some entertainment to hold me over in case I got iced-in with nowhere to go. I wound up getting a Battletech novel and a Doctor Who videotape ("The Five Doctors" episode) from the Burlington mall and then one of those 2-pizza deals from Little Caesar's (and some breadsticks 'course), and some two-liter Cokes. The accomodations that night - my first ever in my own apartment - were Spartan to say the least: without my own bed for the time being I had to sleep on the couch. But as I ate my pizza and watched the video, with the ice that ended up trapping me indoors for the next two days falling outside... I felt so much triumphant pleasure. Like a king over my own domain. It didn't matter that I barely had anything at all in the apartment: that it was my very own place to live in for the first time in my life was all that mattered to me. And I was loving it! It was so much fun in fact that a few years later when I moved into my next apartment, I just had to replicate the ritual of eating pizza while watching that same Doctor Who tape on my first night in the place.

Lotta good memories that were had in that apartment, along with a few crazy ones and some that... well, no one would ever believe me if I wrote about it here. But they all started with the ice storm ten years ago this week. And I just felt led to share my own memories about it, to add to those of anyone else who probably remembers the storm also.

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I started a new blog

There's not much to look at so far... I mean, really not much at all... but I started up a new blog a few days ago. I had the idea this past weekend to create an online journal covering developments along the county line between Guilford and Rockingham counties here in North Carolina. The area between Greensboro and Reidsville has started to build up in recent years: lots of new homes and businesses coming to what has for the most part been one of the most rural places you can imagine. The first idea that popped into mind about what to call it was "The Guil-Rock Guardian", but that sounded too dry: even though this is meant to be a serious blog I wanted a more colorful moniker, like those of The Neely Chronicle and The Rhinoceros Times. So I thought about it for the better part of thirty seconds...

...and came up with The Guil-Rock Gremlin. Which may turn out to be quite appropos if/when I wind up having to use it to throw a monkey-wrench into the works for some reason. But for now it's merely there to document what's going on in the "Greensboro/Reidsville metropolitan area". I'm gonna work on graphics for it this weekend (trying hard not to use images from Steven Spielberg's Gremlins movies). So if you're living around the county line between Greensboro and Reidsville (I'm gonna try my best to cover news and issues in both counties) give The Guil-Rock Gremlin a looksee!

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Race the Knight: Mario Kart DS with Wi-Fi is kewl!

Previously I mentioned here that Lisa got me a Nintendo DS for Christmas and that I've been really impressed with Nintendogs. We got a few other games here too: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (which has one of the hardest beginnings I've ever played in a videogame), Super Mario 64 for the DS (still getting used to the crazy camera controls), Pac'nRoll (Lisa's a nut for anything having to do with Pac-Man), and on New Years Eve I ran out and got another game that I'd heard nothing but good about: Mario Kart DS.

First of all, this is a great game in and of itself, even in single-player mode. Longtime fans of the Mario Kart series (going all the way back to the Super Nintendo) will find that this has all the action and humor you'd come to expect from the line. But as any of us who've played a Mario Kart game knows, the real fun is when you play with friends and compete in the race while throwing Koopa shells and Bob-ombs at each other (the one I really hate getting hit with is the lightning bolt that momentarily shrinks you): No telling how many times Lisa and I have thrashed each other playing Mario Kart Double-Dash on the Gamecube. Ideally you and your friends will each have a Nintendo DS and at least one Mario Kart DS cartridge (the game uses the DS's wireless capability to let multiple systems run off one cartridge). But what if you don't know of anyone else with a DS, or what if you do and that friend is located on the other side of the state... or even in another country?

Enter Nintendo's new Wi-Fi Connection: an online service offering free Internet gameplay on DS (and the Nintendo Revolution when it comes out) games that support it. The service just started up in November and there's not many games out at the moment implementing this feature, but there's an awful lot of promise in this, if how Mario Kart DS uses it is any indicator.

Basically, the Nintendo DS has IEEE 802.11 wireless capability built-in. If you take it (and a Wi-Fi enabled game) to most any public "hot-spot" with wireless Internet - or if you have an 802.11b or 802.11g wireless router on your home network - you can access the Wi-Fi Connection with a minimum of configuration on the DS end. It may take a little playing around with the manual settings though: it was two hours from the time I first plugged Mario Kart DS in before I established a hook-up with Wi-Fi. The very first time I tried picking up our wireless network in the apartment, the DS didn't detect it... but it did find two other wireless networks broadcasting the "linksys" factory default ID (here's a tip: CHANGE YOUR SSID when you set up your wireless network!!). I had to type in - via the DS's touch-screen - the SSID of our network before it found it, and then the DS needed our router's WEP encryption key (another tip boys and girls: turn on your WEP or WPA encryption). Still didn't get connected until I told it to auto-obtain both the IP address and the DNS info. Immediately after I did that the DS was able to log in to the Wi-Fi service.

What's Mario Kart DS gameplay like over Wi-Fi? There can be up to four players racing each other, and you would swear that the other three are right in the room with you: it's that good. Now, I haven't won a single matchup yet (I've won a few races but not enough to be #1 overall) but it's still a heckuva lotta fun to race against opponents who are apparently playing in France and Japan. You can customize your cart to reflect your unique identity, via your own racing emblem and nickname: my emblem is a red field with "Ride Hard Die Free" written in black, and my handle is "knghtshft".

And if you happen to know someone who does have a Nintendo DS and Mario Kart DSD, you can give him your friend code to race directly against that player, instead of Wi-Fi simply pitting you against random players. I haven't tried this out yet but if anyone wants to play me, shoot me an e-mail and register my friend code: 111731-598707. I'll take on all comers! And if my track record is any indication, you'll probably beat me hands-down... but I'm still up for a good challenge :-) Oh yeah, and if you want some help in finding good folks to race against, WiTendoFi.com, DS Meet and DS-Play will get you hooked up with nice people that you can send a friendly note to... before you try to run them off the track.

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Media blew it in West Virginia

I don't really feel like posting much on the subject but...

This was just about the most unprofessional behavior I've ever heard come out of the American news media.

I didn't know anything about it until this morning, when the dominating story was the anger at "the miscommunication" regarding the West Virginia coal mine accident. And I heard some pretty outrageous things about how the major news networks handled the announcement that twelve men had survived, before news came three hours later that in fact only one made it and a dozen had died.

They should have waited for official confirmation - either from company honchos or leaders of the rescue effort - before making so bold a pronouncement. And then they should have kept their cool and acted with solemn dignity... even if it had turned out that the twelve had made it through okay. Instead it sounds more like the media made a story of how the media was covering a story that later turned out to be false.

I'm not casting complete blame on the news media about this thing. Bad things happen, mistakes are made, there is some confusion... and that has to be expected from any disaster. But the press certainly did no one any favors by disregarding journalistic integrity for sake of a triumphant headline and higher ratings.

Let's hope next time that reporters from the major news outlets will remember to thoroughly source and verify their information before passing it along to others.

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Null and Void: Thoughts on the domestic spying situation

Five years ago when the Bush administration was sworn in, I remember hearing so much about how "the adults had taken over" after the disastrous Clinton term. There was supposed to be a lot more responsibility and accountability. These were the people who were going to bring integrity back to the White House, we were told.

What we got instead has been the worst destruction of the concept of the rule of law that has ever happened in the entire history of the republic.

It's like this: there is either a government that comes by consent of the will of the people, or there is government existing for its own sake. Under one we still have a contract in effect that was sealed with the blood of patriots. Under the other, that contract is null and void, and there no longer exists any reason why any conscientious American should be beholden to this government at all.

The Bush cabal is exactly like the Clintons before them, if not to a far worse degree. The whole purpose of their being in office is the seizure of power and consolidating the hold on what power they have already. At the core of their being THEY REALLY DO NOT BELIEVE that the American people have the ability to govern themselves. To the Bush camp, the American people instead are a citizenry that must constantly "be fooled" and lied to. They honestly believe that they are anointed to be our masters, and whatever sycophants have attached themselves to the Bush junta are in it only because they like to feel a sense of that same power, however far removed they are from their idol. If the object of their adoration is attacked, they see it as an attack on themselves and lash out accordingly... doesn't that same something about how hollow and petty they really are? They don't even bring real ideas to the table, just their hatred and fear and loathing of those who have the strength of will to think on their own.

"Oh Chris you're being ridiculous! Every President since Jimmy Carter has had the power to spy without warrants!" Maybe so... but did they have authority from the Constitution to use that power? Did any of these Presidents stop to ask themselves if what they were doing was the right thing to do? And if it is not, then wouldn't the real mark of leadership and integrity be to put a stop to this kind of spying without being provoked to do so?

Bush can't be President forever. But his abuses of power will remain far longer afterward. Sooner or later, someone else is going to hold the office of President... and they are going to point right back at the precedent Bush is setting when they do begin using unwarranted domestic spying for political and vindictive purpose. I would give it no more than two or three more presidential election cycles, before we start to see this blatant kind of misuse.

The George W. Bush years will go down in history, I believe, as being the point at which it will be realized in the future that it could longer be said that we were a nation of law, but instead became a nation of men. If President Bush insists that he does not have to abide by the Constitution of the United States, then there is no longer any compelling moral reason why any of us should abide by it either.

So it is that George W. Bush has proven to be a far greater threat to the constitutional rule of law than Bill Clinton ever was.

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A third helping of King Kong

After Lisa got back around 8 a.m. on New Years Day (she took a train down to Georgia to visit her family, I couldn't make it 'cuz of other obligations) that afternoon we went to the movies. She'd been wanting to see Pride and Prejudice for awhile so she saw that, while I was wanting something other than a "chick flick" so I watched King Kong for the third time. And I swear this movie just keeps getting better and better. It's funny: the first time when Darth Larry and I caught it opening night, the theater was probably less than 1/4th full. A few days later when I saw it with Lisa, there were quite a few more people seeing it. And this past Sunday there were even more people still! What do I make of it? I think that King Kong is definitely having long-term draw at the box office, and the only reasons that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is edging it out for the current #1 spot is (A) the Narnia flick is much shorter i.e. able to be shown more times per day and (B) it has the "wanna see" factor for the kiddies. Otherwise King Kong is holding its own pretty darned well. It's definitely getting good word-of-mouth, and that's going to sustain it for awhile yet.

Anyway, I don't know why but I enjoyed this third showing more than the previous ones. The more I see it the easier it's becoming to overlook the flaws that are in it (which I'd already admitted to in my review the other week). Plus as a "third-timer" now it's just a heckuva lotta fun to go in knowing when to watch my fellow audience members' reactions, like the "bug pit" sequence: the lady to my right got really squeamish when that one happened onscreen! A lot more people cried at the end of this showing too. Heck, I felt like crying even moreso this time.

Don't know if I'll see this movie any more times while it's running in the theaters, but if you haven't already, give yourself a treat and check out King Kong. It's definitely worth five bucks and three hours of your time. Oh yeah, Lisa says that Pride and Prejudice was a pretty good movie too, so I'm gonna look into that one when it hits DVD.

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Good day today. One of the best even.

This has been about the most perfect holiday season I've known in many years, and I'm really hating to see it come to an end. Tomorrow Lisa and I head back to our teaching jobs. We'll keep the tree up for the rest of the week, and then it'll come down until next December. A lot of songs from Trans-Siberian Orchestra's The Christmas Attic CD keep playing in my head, especially "Christmas Canon", "The Music Box" and "The Three Kings And I (What Really Happened)". Those three, along with a few from the new Enya CD that Lisa got, really express the whole range of feeling I had this season.

So today we made the most of it, and got out for awhile. We wound up driving to Burlington for some reason or another, then headed back to Greensboro, stopping at Four Seasons Mall where Lisa got a new purse and I racked up some Star Wars Christmas ornaments (and two Galactic Heroes keychains that Lisa thought were too cute :-) then got a big box of cinnamon rolls from Cinnabon. We got home and while flicking through channels I saw that Time Bandits was playing on one channel... Lord only knows how many people are still in therapy since that first came out a quarter-century ago. As I tried to explain this weirdfest to Lisa she made chicken alfredo for dinner. And then about 7:30 I headed out to pick up a few things from a nearby store before going to my parents' house to watch Monday Night Live. Had a good evening with them and I even wound up calling the show to offer my moral support (long story but if you go to the show's blog that'll fill you in on the raging controversy that has blown this area wide open).

It was on the drive back home, which takes about 16 minutes or so, that for some reason I dialed up Wagner's "Prelude to Parsifal" on my MP3 player through the car's stereo. And it brought out a lot of the emotions I've been feeling the past few days or so. Between some other things going on in my life and the past week especially, this really has been the most wonderful period of life that I've known for some time. I don't want this to end. I don't want things to change from where they are now. But they are going to change and I can't stop that. There will be some bad, I know this. But there will be some good too. And the bad is going to work with the good, I must have faith at least, to yield an even greater good than I can realize right now. Eternal blossoming, becoming something new from that which we have been, unfolding according to God's design... if you've never listened to "Prelude to Parsifal" before, that's what this piece of music is all about. Not fighting the change but instead letting it happen. To hold onto things that will eventually be lost, that's not the way to live the full life. You can't even really hold onto yourself. You have to be willing to die a little each moment so that you can experience continual rebirth and re-creation... until we fully become that which we were meant to be.

I'm not the same person tonight that I was a year ago, or even probably six months ago. That Chris Knight is gone forever. I'm someone who has a lot of his characteristics, but I've also grown a lot too. And the Chris who types on this keyboard a year from now will be a different person then, hopefully for the better.

But however long this time lasts, today was a beautiful day (even if it's been raining and foggy all day). It was just about perfect. The past two weeks have been perfect. And that's something that nothing will ever be able to take away from me.

It's nearing midnight now, and a line of thunderstorms is coming through. Yes, real thunder (and pretty loud too) along with lightning in early January. For most of my life I've heard that if it thunders in winter it'll snow ten days later. The first time I heard that it was 1993 when we had a thunderstorm... exactly ten days before the Storm of the Century. And it's happened four or five times since then that I can recall. I'll make a note of it here if we get snow a week and a half from now.

I wanna make a note of something: I'm quite proud of the "home improvement project" that my friend Johnny conned... I mean, asked me to help him with this past Thursday night. We coulda gone to see King Kong (which I did see for the third time yesterday afternoon) instead we put up shelves in his walk-in closet. So years from now instead of remembering seeing a movie about a big ape, he and his wife can look on those shelves and remember Chris coming over to help. Well, it's a neat deal to me to make a note of that anyway :-)

So here it is, the perfect day drawing to a close. But it had to if it's going to remain forever special, right?

Signing off for now. I pray tomorrow is just as good as today was.

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Happy New Year 2006

So how am I celebrating the new year? I've had the Sci-Fi Channel's The Twilight Zone marathon going on all evening. And earlier today I picked up Mario Kart DS and after finagling with it for a couple of hours I finally got it working on the Nintendo Wi-Fi network. That's what I was playing as the clock hit midnight (and so far my butt's been consistently handed to me by some guys who are apparently somewhere in Asia).

Awful lotta fireworks going off around the neighborhood tonight. I had the TV switched briefly to ABC and Dick Clark's show: Clark did a pretty good job doing his New Year's Eve show, in spite of the stroke he suffered awhile back.

All things considered, 2006 is off to as good a start as any :-)

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Looking back on 2005

Well, the past twelve months went all over the map, and sometimes drove straight off of it. There were a lot of things that happened that I didn't share on this blog, including at least one real tragedy that we're still waiting to see how this is going to get resolved. This blog isn't really an online journal or diary of everything that goes on in my life: it's just a synopsis of my persona that comes out of writing about the things that interest me, or thoughts I have on various subjects, or sometimes when I need to set the record straight on something. But there was much more going on "behind the scenes" that didn't get put in the spotlight.

What to make of it all? For me, 2005 was a year with a number of disappointments and harsh realizations... some of which I've already written enough about. But toward the end this year started turning into something with a lot more optimism and hopefulness. On one front in particular, I couldn't imagine being more happy.

I can't say that this was a year without some action. 2005 saw friends and I doing some pretty crazy things especially regarding the hooplah surrounding the last Star Wars movie. Speaking of which, one of the highlights was the 1200-mile round trip that Lisa and I made to Star Wars Celebration III... which I still haven't gotten the pics online from it, but only because there were so many. This blog was the first place where it was announced anywhere that one of my best friends is getting married. Not long after that I got to finish and premiere my first movie, and Lord willing there will be more in the future. And speaking of that, there was my excursion deep into the bowels of a nuclear power plant to help with some filmmaking this past summer.

Admittedly, there were some upsets this past year. But now that it's winding down, and looking back on it all and what I went through and now that I'm still standing and able to smile about it all, and with all the positive that did happen... I don't know if I would have changed anything about my personal life this past year. In a weird sort of way, it all worked together to bring me to the point that I'm at now, and I'm really thankful to be here.

So... where do I go from here?

I've no idea what to say to expect. I do plan on "reinventing" this blog though, and sometime soon. The way it looks doesn't reflect who I am anymore all that well. I'm probably going to make it more serious somewhat. However, sometime in 2006 is when I will finally use my funniest graphic ever, I think. So there's one or two surprises that I plan on unloading sometime in the next several months.

So here it is, my final blog post for 2005 after several hundred I've written since last January 1st. I'm glad that I got to chronicle most of the madness and mayhem and merriment that took place during the past 365 days, for the amusement of anyone who might happen to find this blog in years to come.

Here's hoping and praying that all of us will have a great new year in 2006 :-)

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Christmas 2005 update #3: Winding down with some crazy Christmas loot

As I said before, Christmas is something that gets stretched out a bit around our place. That's why I waited a bit to report on the goodies that Santa brought us this year...This was taken Christmas morning before we went anywhere. The night before my sister gave me a giant Darth Vader PEZ dispenser: you tilt back the head and it plays the Star Wars theme music. That might have been the best Christmas present I ever got, until 8 hours later when Anita was upstaged by what Lisa gave me: sitting by the tree on Christmas morning was an (almost) life-sized Artoo-Detoo cooler! You can take his domed head off and put ice and drinks inside his body. He also wheels around on his two legs. Inside Artoo Lisa had put some of the Star Wars M&M figurines, the Darth Vader/Obi-Wan Galactic Heroes set, and a complete set of Star Wars mini-busts. Suffice it to say the Artoo cooler has been probably the most offbeat/neatest thing that I got this year for Christmas, 'cuz it's so cute and I had no idea that such a thing even existed until now. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it after the holidays: maybe keep it in our living room as an exotic conversation piece?

Lisa also got me the Nintendo DS, along with Nintendogs and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (and a nice carry case for it all). She also got me the DVDs of Batman Begins, National Treasure and Apollo 13, and had a pack of Kit-Kats in my stocking. I got her some Xbox and Gamecube games (Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 3 with the dance mat, Donkey Konga 2, Pac-Man World 3 and Karaoke Revolution Party) and a Gameboy Advance SP, the kind with the brighter screen. Later that morning we also got The Polar Express DVD, the boxed sets of Lost Season 1 and The Simpsons Season 6, some CDs and a complete set of regular-sized Revenge of the Sith PEZ dispensers. Think our entire family got some wild and wacky stuff. A good haul to be sure... but more than that it was all the good times and laughter we got to have together at Christmas this year that made it so terrific.

Anyway, I just couldn't let this holiday season pass by without making note of that which I can show you in a picture. Some things ya can't do that with, but that's okay. Just know that we all had a great time this year, and I'm hoping and praying that this next year will see us able to do it all over again for Christmas 2006 :-)

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The News & Record printed my letter yesterday

You can read it here, and even leave a comment about it if you feel so led. It more or less reiterates what I wrote here last week about how some people's defending of President Bush spying on Americans parallels the arguments made by a prominent German legalist that Hitler was justified in acting above the law.

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Grandmother videogame guru proves you're never too old to have fun

CNN has a great article about a 69-year old grandmother in Ohio who is making quite a name for herself as a videogame player.

Grandma, let me play that video game!

Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Posted: 10:21 p.m. EST (03:21 GMT)

SHALERSVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- A 69-year-old grandmother has become the heroine of young video-game fans and the star of a Web log created by her grandson.

Barbara St. Hilaire plays video games 10 hours a day and spends a good part of her Social Security check on games.

St. Hilaire thinks the blog and media attention she's gotten is funny but doesn't quite understand it. However, she appreciates the free games showered on her by video game makers who want to share in the reflected glare of publicity.

And there are the bloggers she has met online. "I guess this is my form of traveling the world," she told the Akron Beacon Journal.

MTV profiled St. Hilaire, hired her as a video game correspondent and offered to screen her interview requests. It's all been, as her 22-year-old grandson Timothy St. Hilaire put it, a bit head-spinning.

"Well, last weekend was hell, but it's over," the grandson told his grandmother's fans on his blog http://oghc.blogspot.com/. The blog is named for her moniker, Old Grandma Hardcore -- as in hardcore video game player...

This is nothing new in Japan, where for years videogame systems (especially Nintendo) have been seen as entertainment for the entire family, including "seasoned citizens". Now the trend is catching on over here. I think it's a good thing: I can't wait to play games with my grandkids someday! Well I can wait but you know what I mean. I found this story after hearing about it on Gamermom, a just-discovered blog that also proves you don't have to relinquish the joystick just because you're getting a little older :-)

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Meet Otto the Nintendog

Christmas morning I got a present from Lisa that had been on my list since I first wrote about it back in August: a Nintendo DS and the Nintendogs game. The DS is quite a videogame system: I also got Super Mario 64 and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and have been really entertained by them, but the DS game that's hooked me most has gotta be Nintendogs. Lisa got me the Dachshund & Friends edition, which looks like this...
You tell me: could you resist a videogame box that looks this cute?

I charged up the DS's battery while we were off celebrating with my family on Christmas morning, and plugged in the Nintendogs cartridge later that afternoon. The Nintendo DS also plays Gameboy Advance games by the way, and has a VERY nicely lit screen... but maybe not as bright as the one on the Gameboy Advance SP that I got Lisa. I started the game and played around in the kennel for awhile, then I picked out a male miniature dachshund puppy.

But what to name him? Nintendogs uses the DS's built-in microphone to speak your dog's name and tell it to do tricks: after the pup learns its name it responds to your voice commands. For awhile I played around with "resurrecting" two real-life miniature dachshies I used to have as digital simulacra, but that didn't seem like the right thing to do by Penny and Buster's memory. And I didn't want to name him "Colonel Klink" either: that name is getting saved for the real brown male mini dachshund I plan on getting someday. In the end, I wound up giving him a good German name for a good German dog.

So here is Otto. He's not doing much in the picture because I took his photo while he was asleep. So far I've taught him his name and trained him to sit, speak, and shake hands, and I'm working on having him wiggle his butt in the air on command. Otto likes to play ball but for some reason he's scared of the stick when I throw it for him to fetch. He's pretty friendly to other dogs that he meets when I take him out for a walk (usually about twice a day) but sometimes he's too curious for his own good (like yesterday when he ate a bag of popcorn that was laying in the street). He's a pretty clean dog: he "relieves" himself just about every time we go for a walk, and I've only had to give him a bath once since we've been together. He seems to get hungry an awful lot though, but I guess that's 'cuz he's still a puppy, although one of the nice things about Nintendogs is that the pups never get any older.

Other than that though, Otto seems to display something that's fascinated me ever since I first heard about this game: he's growing and learning, with some apparent personality. I know, it's like that movie A.I.: "his love is real, but he is not". But so help me, other than having a silicon soul, this pup really does come across as having a real heart from the way he acts and responds to stimuli (Otto loves having his belly rubbed, which you can do with the stylus on the DS's touch-sensitive screen). Put the memory of the Tamagotchi "virtual pets" or the Pokémon from a few years back out of mind: Nintendogs is something vastly more sophisticated... and empathetic. I've seen many examples of "virtual life" over the years, but Nintendogs strikes me as the one that's most hit the mark. If there was a Turing test for pooches, Nintendogs would pass with flying colors.

Suffice it all to say, I'm really enjoying Nintendogs... and a lot more than I thought I would, even. If you don't mind the fact that you can't physically rub your dog's fur, this is a pretty good thing to have in place of a real pet if circumstance doesn't allow for that for the time being. Plus it's GREAT to be able to watch your doggy run around the Nintendo DS screen while it's sitting on the desk as you work on other things.

Okay, time to go to the park with Otto. Let's see how he likes playing frisbee :-)

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