Bob Dylan & Baseball

No, that title isn't a result of a smoke induced hallucination music fest. The Baseball Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, NY
has added Dylan's acappella version of
"Take Me Out To The Ball Game" to its archives.

If by some chance you are not familiar with Bob Dylan
and the historical significance that his music embodies to this day,
I highly recommend that you watch:

Ashes to Dust

The keeper of the flame
becomes the keeper of ashes
Everything turns to dust
and salts the earth

Neglected Book

I finally finished reading The King of Torts by John Grisham last night. It doesn't usually take me this long to read a book, 2-3 days tops, depending on how much time I have ... I guess I just haven't been in read mode these past couple of weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge JG fan, I recently read and enjoyed Bleachers, The Broker was great and I've read The Brethren (my JG favorite) at least 3x's, but the moral of this story felt empty.

It has great characters, as do all his novels, moves at a great pace and I learned about the greed that drives lawsuit lawyers, but I wasn't sure how to feel about the main character Clay Carter. He gets whirlwind pulled into this new world of law and gets caught up in the greed and spending without a second thought to his new clients. Of course the inevitable happens: his new found luck takes a turn for the worst, he starts to loose everything, but manages to find his morals again and doesn't end up to badly by the end of the book.
All in all, still an entertaining read. I can't wait for The Innocent Man (Grisham's first non-fiction book) to come out this fall. The book will chronicle the life of Ronald Keith Williamson.

Expand your vocabulary and your imagination --- read a book!

Margarita Jellybeans

;-p

Hi Cabezon

I miss you.

Love and Hugs!

Manic Motivation

The Senate Sucks

A plan to boost the minimum wage for the first time

in nearly a decade was rejected by the Senate on Wednesday

(they have rejected 11 attempts since 1998).

An amendment offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from the current $5.15.

$5.15 per hour?!! That ends up being $10,700 a year. No one can live on that! Are there even any employers out there who would stoop so low as to only pay their workers minimum wage?

Even doubling the current wage wouldn't be sufficient enough to support yourself, much less a family. Look at the basics: car maintenance, high gas prices, housing costs, groceries and medical

... all necessities of life.

Here's the rub: Just last week, the House rejected an effort to block a $3,300 annual increase in the base salary for Congress members.

If their raise goes through, (emphasis on their) rank-and-file members will earn $168,500 --- a $31,600 increase.

Justice

Funny but Mean Title

'Angelina Jolie Not Done Collecting Refugees'

courtesy of: Defamer

Beyond The Future

A weeklong series of live Web chats with noted experts and Washington Post reporters examining the kinds of technological advancements the world could see in 20, 50 or even 100 years.
Related news on the subject can be found on the Science and
Tech Frontier pages of washingtonpost.com
Monday's Topic: The Environment, Noon ET and
When Humans Transcend Biology, 2 p.m. ET
Schedule: Q&As with the Experts

Trans Texas Corridor

What is The Trans-Texas Corridor?

The Trans-Texas Corridor is an all-Texas superhighway that is planned to include tollways for passenger vehicles and trucks, passenger bullet-trains, commuters trains, high-speed freight trains, pipelines of all types, and electrical transmission towers. read more here courtesy of Corridor Watch. Also Visit The Official TxDOT or Trans-Texas Corridor Site

Doesn't solve the traffic congestion problem.

The singular focus of the Corridor plan is to build corridors that connect regions of the state intentionally bypassing urban centers. Those metropolitan areas are left to deal with their own traffic and mobility problems, including access to the Corridor. Since our large cities are the traffic generators and destination points, the Corridor will offer little if any relief for traffic congestion.

It's designed to generate revenue first and transportation second.

The Corridor plan is designed to provide transportation funds, more than transportation. Rather than identify specific transportation needs and offer solutions, the Plan defines funding as the need and the Corridor as the solution. Accordingly it's not important where the Corridor is built, as long as it generates revenue.

E Pluribus Pluribus?

While much of the immigration debate focuses on financial issues - whether illegal immigrants hurt or help the economy - the missing link to understanding Americans' anxiety over the issue is the reality that we are failing to build a citizenry that loves America first.

The unasked question is whether we are building allegiance to anything other than the almighty dollar.

For much of our history, immigrants took their first steps onto American soil understanding that coming to this country meant pledging allegiance to one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hyphenated Americans

The United States stands proudly as a nation of legal immigrants.

This is not a chance collection of separate peoples united merely by geography or economic opportunity. Rather, this is a nation of citizens united in our shared respect for the inviolable freedoms and rights found in our great documents.

Whatever your opinion of amnesty and "guest worker" programs, the truth is that for many Hispanics residing in the USA, the greater metaphor of America as a "melting pot" has ceced to the notion of America as mutually exclusive groups.

If many immigrants are not assimilating, part of the blame lies with America's academic and political elites. We live in an era where the Pledge of Allegiance is under attack in many schools. Several schools banned the flying of U.S. flags.

Today, multiculturalism is considered a civic virtue - in which accepting foreign traditions, values, laws and languages is put ahead of promoting immigrants' integration into our society. When Hispanics can do so much of their business in Spanish, vote in Spanish, take a driver's license exam in Spanish and send their kids to bilingual public schools, what reason do they have to learn English?

Subway Entertainment?

Metro Considers Adding Entertainment To Transit System

Board To Discuss Idea On Thursday

Survey Vote

Dad (Yo Pops!)

Happy

Birthday!

Needs to be slapped:

All the people who told Paris Hilton that she could sing and

whoever allowed her to make a video (again ;-p)

One accusation (maybe false) - it's happened ...

but 14 counts of child pornography (oh, come on)!

You don't need this 12-Step Program,

you just need to be slapped. Period.

Oh yeah, and get a life!

Thoughtless Thursday

Here's a good excuse for when you get pulled over for speeding.

Proof that every-damn-body has a cell phone.

Always a market and profit to be made - Killer Calendars.

Want a Philly Cheesesteak? Order in English

"Yo, gimme a cheesesteak wit, will youse?"

And here I thought that Prison was a place to pay for your crimes ...

Superstitious much?

HELL, Michigan - The Road to Hell was crowded with the curious on Tuesday as well as devils-in-disguise, hearse enthusiasts, Christian protesters and merchants trying to cash in on the apocalypse.

Around the country, some superstitious mothers-to-be took steps Tuesday to make sure their babies were not born on the most bedeviling of dates, 6-6-6. read story

The number 666 is cool. Made famous by the Book of Revelation (Chapter 13, verse 18, to be exact), it has also been studied extensively by mathematicians because of its many interesting properties. Here is a compendium of mathematical facts about the number 666. Most of the well-known "chestnuts" are included, but many are relatively new and have not been published elsewhere. The Number of the Beast by Mike Keith

Who falls for this?

Ah, where to begin?... First of all, let me make it abundantly clear on just how much I hate Spam! And no, I'm not talking about the regurgitated looking, pink, fat congealed concoction that is compressed into a 12 oz. pull-tab can (do not get me started on how gross I think that is). I'm talking about the little annoying number that you try to ignore (you know, right there under your inbox) - the one that just gets bigger everyday until you can't take it anymore and because you have no life at the moment ... you click ... and in comes the bombardment of all useless things ever thought of or invented. I usually just delete them without opening, but today my curiosity got the better of me and I *gasp* opened some.

I've heard stories of these types of emails, but never actually saw one for myself. The gist of most is that they are: wealthy relatives, students stuck abroad, bankers trying to rid themselves of dormant accounts, etc. Most emails are elegantly written, some even give you links so that you can check the validity of their claims, some appeal to your emotions ... and all of them need your help to acquire these millions of dollars of which you will be paid a handsome fee (usually about 33%) if you just send your personal contact information along with your bank account number so that the funds can be transferred---wh,wh,what?!

I haven't the energy to elaborate on the profound stupidity involved with the money-hungry driven motives of the truly gullible, but if you receive any emails with a subject of: 'Your Friend', 'Urgent Reply Needed', 'Trust', or 'Contact Me ASAP', just delete!

New Rules

Don't blame illegal immigrants for driving down wages. Blame Congress. Republicans in Congress have to stop saying that the problem with Mexicans coming over the border is they keep wages down. You know what keeps wages down? The fact that Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage since 1997. 1997, when my dealer still had a beeper!
Car dealer, car dealer, what did I say?

Bluetooth headset users have to do something that lets me know you're just on the phone and not a dangerous schizophrenic. Right? We don't know if you're talking to your secretary or the evil leprechaun who lives in your head. You're not the chief communications officer of the Starship Enterprise. You're a shoe salesman asking your mom if you can bring over your laundry. If I wanted to overhear every tedious scrap of brain static rattling around in your head, I'd read your blog.

If you work at an office, you have to take a turn cleaning the office microwave. I opened ours the other day, and a bat flew out. The inside looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. The three settings are now, "Cook," "Defrost" and "Hepatitis." And if you're not going to clean the damn thing, at least take out whatever is growing in there
so we can harvest the stem cells.

Real Time with Bill Maher

I Finally Read It

I've just finished reading the much-hyped DaVinci Code (one of the last ones to do so, I know). I can see why this book has garnered so much media attention and concern from the Church's point of view. I found it very entertaining because of how real people, places and historical facts were incorporated into the plot line. Plot-line people ... this is a fictional book!

It's a scary notion when society takes the printed word at face value. Even scarier is that this book is being used as an educational tool. Sure, there are many interesting and factual excerpts within the chapters that anyone can access via the Internet to further their knowledge on that subject, but it still doesn't make this particular story true. It's a fantasized conspiracy theory brought to life by the imagination of a writer for the purpose of entertaining you as the reader. I don't know what's worse: The inability for some to distinguish the difference between fact and fiction or Hollywood being a classroom where many choose to receive their education.

Take for example the negative portrayal of Opus Dei:
Most people have never heard of this Catholic Institution, yet most who have read the book and or have seen the movie will believe that all of it's members are somewhat insanely fanatical and that the Catholic Church has qualities resembling organized crime more than that of spiritual leadership. This is but one of the many things that is very wrong with our society - we are so quick and eager to categorize and judge without knowledge or understanding.

You can't base any one civilization, nation, organization, race or species on the actions of one or a few or more ...
there will always be those who deviate.
Not to mention that you can't base something real on something made up!