NOOOOOOOO! (Tonight's LOST)

"Peek-a-boo... I see you!"

I so did not want this to happen.

Awright well... who's going to continue building the church?!?

Really good episode though, even though that was the one character I did not want to die: gotta admit that was pretty neat CGI for his death scene though. Eyepatch Guy looks pretty evil. These two new castaways: they're being "introduced" rather clumsily. I feel nothing toward them whatsoever. But we haven't really been introduced to many other Flight 815 survivors outside of the "core" group yet, so I'll be forgiving and give them another few shots to prove themselves.

And ummm... didn't Juliet's "movie" that she showed Jack seem an awful lot like my newest commercial for my school board campaign? I saw that and was giggling mad at how alike they are :-)

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The Campaign: Public Disclosure of Finances

This past Monday I filed the Third Quarter-Plus Report from my campaign. The deadline was October 30th and I know it seems like I waited 'til the last minute to turn it in, but I just wanted to make sure that it was as timely as possible. Every contribution this campaign has received and every cent that I've spent on things for it is accounted for in that report. At this point I need do no more filing of reports unless I suddenly wind up getting contributions of $1000 or more between now and this coming Tuesday... in which case I have to report them within 48 hours of receipt. But like Dad said when I told him about that on Sunday night "How many of those are you expecting to get??"

I've only made one more expenditure (and have received no further contributions) since then. Earlier today I bought a half-page ad in both the Reidsville Review and the Eden Daily News for this coming Sunday. It's a special deal that they've got going for candidates this week only. It set me back $250... but like I said, that'll most likely be the very last bit of money that gets spent in this campaign.

So in case anyone's wondering about the financial end of a political campaign of this scale - and because according to law this is going to be public knowledge anyway that you can look up for yourself - I'm going to go ahead and disclose how much in contributions I received and how much I spent doing this campaign.

The official name of the campaign is the "Knight for School Board 2006 Committee". You should be able to find that if you go looking through the North Carolina Board of Elections website.

During this campaign, my committee raised $914 in contributions. Those came from personal contributions, mailed-in checks and via PayPal through the campaign website.

In terms of spending, the total expenditures of my committee has been $1,513.75. That money was used to buy everything from pens, to domain name registration for the website, to stamps, to the die-cast Death Star and TIE Fighter models used in the first commercial (both were about two bucks), to yard signs and then advertising in print and on local television... with those last few being the biggest expenditures, obviously.

And from the looks of the books, it was the advertising that was the only real big crunch on my own wallet in this thing. Everything else wound up basically getting paid for because of the kindness of the contributors. I am very thankful to each and every person who has thought that this campaign was worth supporting like this.

I'll share this with you, my friends: when I started this, I had no idea how I was going to fund something like this. I prayed about it. And I asked God that if He really wanted me to go for this like it had felt like He was leading me to do, that He would make provision for the funding of it. At the end of it, I only had to pay a few hundred bucks out of more than fifteen hundred: that sure sounds like He provided a way to me.

So this may sound like a weird thing to some people to talk about in a campaign finance report, but I'm thankful to God that He did allow for me to run a world-class campaign in my very first outing as a political candidate. And I'm thankful to everyone who believed in me enough to make a contribution to the cause. I am very, very indebted to them in gratitude for this... and will probably be feeling that toward them for the rest of my life.

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Is someone going "off the island" on LOST tonight?

Last week's Lost was terrific! Even though I didn't get to finally watch it until Friday night because I was so busy with debates, making some other campaign appearances etc. So I downloaded an HD copy off the torrents and Lisa and I watched it together. The whole "Hey Sawyer we put a bomb in your chest" thing really had me gripping the arms of my chair. If there's any complaint I've had about Lost lately now though, it's this whole thing with Desmond and how he supposedly knows what's going to happen in the future. Even for a show like this, that seems... a bit hokey. It sort of has the sense of being the kind of thing that's a sign that a show is starting to get ready to "jump the shark" if you know what I mean. Hoping this is something that won't be abused and will have a sound explanation for sometime down the line.

Well, tonight's episode is supposed to focus on Mr. Eko, who is one of my very favorite characters on Lost. And supposedly tonight one of the regular characters is going to die. Are they going to "off" Eko?! I hope not! But since this is an Eko-centric episode I'm dreading that they're about to pull off an Ana-Lucia on us again. We're also supposed to see some of the castaways make a return trip to the Pearl Station, in the hopes of using the computers there to locate Jack, Kate and Sawyer.

What will happen tonight? We'll soon find out! Just please, please don't kill off Eko. Or Hurley. Or Sayid. Or Locke. Or...

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Happy Halloween!

For the first time since I've had it, I'm not wearing my Jedi costume for Halloween. Just hasn't been time to do much in the spirit of the holiday today. But we did manage to carve a traditional-looking Jack-o'-lantern (which was supposed to have been a cool Darth Vader one but I sorta messed up: needed a larger pumpkin it turns out). I did wear my lightsaber down to the station when I went there a little while ago though. And we've had some trickster-or-treatsters drop by the place tonight so we've gotten to dole out some candy. So we have enjoyed Halloween 2006 after all :-)

By the way, I know I'd promised a "sequel" to last year's popular ghost photographs article, made up of responses that have come in recently to that one (people sending their own stories, photos etc.) but the sad fact of the matter is I just haven't had time to do any compiling/editing, between the demands of work and the campaign. But I do plan on doing that sometime soon, maybe even next week after the election. Yah it won't be the Halloween spirit anymore but when you look at the chronology from a linear perspective it will still be "near" the season, right? :-)

Anyhoo, hope you and yours are having a happy Halloween this year!

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Campaign Commercial the Third

The third (and probably final) commercial to come out of my campaign for school board...
EDIT 10:43 PM EST: I keep watching this and now... I wish that this was the ad that I had been running already. I really felt compelled to make the first one: deep down I knew that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't make that one, and it was either make it now or never do it at all. I like how the second one came out better though: it was always my intention to do a more serious one for Commercial #2 but the reaction to the first one sorta obligated me to address that in the second, instead of using it to talk about other things. This third one though, it's both serious and entertaining and... different. I quite like how it turned out. Will it help make my case about being elected to the school board? Dunno. But I've basically done everything I can so far as commercials go with getting my message out.

But however this election turns out, I'm feeling mighty proud at how I ran my first-ever political campaign... and especially my commercials. I intend to leave them available on YouTube permanently, so that others might enjoy them long after this campaign season is over.

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Straight-ticket voting: A truly wasted vote

What's the point of being a voter at all if you don't even bother to consider every race and candidate on the ballot?

This past weekend someone I know pretty well told me that he couldn't vote for me in next week's election. It wasn't anything that he held against me: he even told me he thought I'd make a great member of the school board. But the fact of the matter was that he and his wife had taken advantage of the early voting because they would be out of town next weekend... and the first and only thing they had done when the got their ballots was to mark them as straight-party tickets. And since the school board is a non-partisan race, none of those candidates were voted for at all.

I like this guy a lot. But because he wanted to vote "conveniently" that's possibly two votes for me that I'll never see. Which doesn't sound like a lot but trust me: I've come to very much appreciate the value of every single vote that is cast in your favor. Especially in a race that has sixteen candidates in it: every vote is exponentially magnified in value compared to those cast in other races.

I'm not going to think any less of my friend and his wife: they're really good people. But they - and too many other Americans - don't value the right to vote as preciously as they should. If they did, they would take the time to both educate themselves on the election beforehand, and then carefully consider the votes they cast once they actually get to the poll. Voting a straight-ticket is... well, cheap and lazy. And in my mind, it's the only truly wasted vote there is. A vote for a "third-party" candidate, however little chance he or she has of actually winning an election, is vastly more valuable if made after sober consideration than is a ballot that's marked Democrat or Republican straight down the line with scarce - or no - thought at all.

Straight-ticket voting should be done away with. Because if a person is going to take the time to cast a vote he or she should be made to consider what or who exactly it is that they are voting for. I say that because the power of the vote is far too much to be entrusted to minds that don't want to use that power responsibly. Come to think of it, any identifiers of party affiliation should be stricken from the ballot too: make the voter think about each candidate as an individual person, instead of someone who's "worth voting for" only because they happen to have a "D" or an "R" stamped next to their name.

I'm not expecting any of this to happen though, at least not anytime soon. The two major part... excuse me the one ruling party masquerading as two can only stay in power so long as it can depend on citizens who are all too willing to take the easy way out when it comes to voting. If people were suddenly expected to vote for candidates based on actual merit... why, what good would it be to have the Democrat and Republican mechanism at all then?

I'm not writing this out of a sense of "sour grapes"... but as a candidate I do now have a much greater appreciation of this problem than I did before. And I felt led to share that on this page.

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Shane's Rib Shack: Another great barbecue find!

" You can probably guess that Shane is all about food. Never trust a skinny guy when it comes to matters of eating."

-- from the Shane's Rib Shack website

A friend from church spent the afternoon with us after the service. On our way out we were trying to think of where to go for lunch and Lisa suggested Shane's Rib Shack on Wendover Avenue in Greensboro (in the same strip mall as the Circuit City). She said she'd heard it was supposed to be pretty good. So that's where we headed.

And I can't begin to describe how delighted I am with discovering this place!! Shane's Rib Shack is a pretty new franchise coming out of Georgia, from the looks of their website. But I think this place is going to be big. Really, really big. It's not the kind of restaurant you usually go to for ribs like T.G.I. Fridays or Applebee's. But it's not a fast-food joint either. It's more like Zaxby's, and I like Zaxby's a lot. Well, two things captured my attention when we walked into the place: the delicious smell of ribs, and the chain's motto: "It's gonna get messy."

Lisa had a barbecue pork sandwich. Michael and I both ordered a half-rack of ribs. I think Michael was the first to comment on how fraggin' huge the portions were... of everything. And let me tell you brother, those ribs were gob-slobberin'ly good!! Especially with that sauce: how I would love to have a bottle of this sauce in my cabinet next to those I keep on hand from Pigs R Us and Williamson Bros. Please Shane, if you ever read this: bottle and sell the sauce!! I promise I won't "reverse engineer" the stuff (you've just GOT to read the page on Shane's website about their sauce. I was honking with laughter: turns out this Shane guy is as good a comedian as he is a ribs guy). The cheese sticks and french fries were delicious as well.

So if you happen to be somewhere near one of their locations, give Shane's Rib Shack a try. Rib afficionado that I am, I was definitely satisfied with the experience of eating there.

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