If only the rest of us could be as error free as Karl Rove, this world would be a better place.

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“Are all the Terry Pratchetts okay for the kids?”
“Yes, dear.”
“So I don’t need to box any of them up?”
“No, dear.”
There are days when I wonder how we ever got together.

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Blessedly cool weather and the splatter of a few raindrops. A little cool and wet makes for a nice change, although since tomorrow is our water park day, I really hope this is over in less than twenty-four hours. Still, we need the wet, so it is welcome back on Tuesday.

We watched two movies this week, one as a family, one just me and Jennie. Both were action movies, which meant very simple plots on which to hang chases, explosions, gunfire and general mayhem. The first was the embarrassingly funny action comedy Transformers, the second the dour Bourne Ultimatum.

Transformers was frequently embarrassing to watch, and painful to listen to, due to the onscreen stupidity and very high noise levels. The movie was often hilarious, but mainly in what I think were supposed to be the touching moments. It is the story of a love triangle between a twenty-something year old high school junior, his first car, and the leathery well-tanned mid-twenties high school classmate he’s had a crush on since the first grade. The car turns out to be a pouty robot named Bumblebee and the classmate turns out to be into grand theft auto (no, not the video game, dammit!). Their poignant (or is it boring?) love affair is set against the battle of the boppin’ robots known as the Autobots. Some bad Autobots, all of whom have red glowing eyes which show how evil they are (well, except for the few that they forgot to give red eyes) kill people and battle the good robots, who have blue eyes and are mainly a bunch of pansies. Things explode. Robots get mangled. People are sad. Nobody bleeds. The good robots, with a little help from their friends, win in the end and it all ends with a group hug. Ahhhh, how sweet! It is pretty much impossible to tell what is going on most of the time, since it is mainly a bunch of robots fighting in a blur of metallic explosions, sparks and things flying off in every direction and lots of noise. Lots and lots of noise. Robots are damned noisy. In between the fights, people say IMPORTANT THINGS, and the head good robot tries to recite the world’s worst clichés. I think there must have been a cliché contest going on with the robots. Oh, and every drives GM vehicles in the near future.

The Bourne Ultimatum features a very serious and considerably heavier Matt Damon, sort of a slightly less constipated Harrison Ford in Frantic. I like that this third Bourne film picks up right where the last one left off, although it is difficult at first to reconcile the thinner Bourne of the last two movies with the jowly, middle-aged Bourne of this movie. It doesn’t help when they do flashbacks to the thinner Bourne. Does this mean that I did not enjoy Bourne Ultimatum? No, actually, I thought it was a great action movie. It didn’t way itself down with too much plot, but did at least have enough to give the characters a reason for doing what they did. Unlike the latest Bond, Bourne does not fly along rooftops, but has to actually work to do all of his silly jumping around. And he gets winded and bloody when fighting. A nice change for an action film. Nowhere near as silly as Transformers, with dialog that isn’t completely laughable. Fun stuff, the whole movie. Which leads me to my biggest problem with Bourne.

At $9.50 a ticket, movies are damned expensive. If I wait a few months, I can buy the DVD release or rent the movie for less than it costs for two tickets. Throw in gas and the babysitter fees for the evening and I could upgrade my home theatre system. So why go to the theatre to watch a movie? Two reasons, really: 1. To get away from the kids, and 2. to see it on the big screen.

While we got to see Bourne Ultimatum on the big screen, we did not get away from the kids. The group of teenage morons to our right weren’t aware that they were in a movie theatre, apparently. They spent the first twenty minutes giggling, yapping and flashing their cell phones, generally being total idiots. They quieted down after Jennie pointed out that the rest of the audience was there to watch a movie, but did not quite understand that cell phone use in a theatre is frowned upon. The sad thing is, they weren’t the only ones incapable of keeping their phones shut; throughout the evening, several cell phones were flashed on for a while. I’m guessing people were calling friends watching other movies to find out what was going on. And my wife wonders why I don’t like people . . .

If theatre owners cared, there is technology to block cell phone signals, but their only concern is getting people into theatres, not making the experience enjoyable. Even if signals are blocked, that won’t stop the geniuses who use their cell phones as flashlights, or play video games when the movie gets too slow to be interesting to them. All things considered, it is going to be a while before I attend another movie outside of my basement.

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Quitting already, Mr. Snow? Wow, at least your excuse is unique; most of your ilk have quit to “spend more time with my family,” which appears to be NeoConSpeak for “I’m going to be indicted, impeached or exposed any day now and want to lay low for a bit.” I guess I can understand . . . $168,000 a year just isn’t going to cut it if you’re planning on pulling a Ted Haggard. Oh wait, you’re not a gay prostitute loving crack-head? In that case, how can $168K not be enough for a government job? It’s been a while since we’ve heard “Ask not what your country can do for you . . . ” hasn’t it? Thanks, Tony, for showing us once again some true Republican values: Quitting, whining and money-grubbing.

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Once again, we’re making headlines here in Northern Idaho. No cross burnings this time, but rather a hoped-for book ban. Some may say this is silly, but I say it is time. We need to stand up for what is right. No more smut in schools. But why stop there? Let’s get it out of other gathering places as well. More specifically, it is time to address smut in churches.

You want to limit our children’s exposure to descriptions of violence, rape, incest, murder and sorcery? Ban the master of smut and filth: The bible. This collection of short fiction stories covers everything from erotic poetry to bestiality and homosexuality to murder and rape, all woven against the backdrop of the story of an angry supernatural being who behaves like a very powerful amoral child, smiting and coveting humans throughout history. At one time, he knocks up a minor character called Mary and demands that the world worship the offspring of his affair, a magician named Jesus.

The first part of the book (pre-wizard) is mainly people performing acts of cruelty and having a lot of sex and the supernatural Yahweh critter throwing hissy-fits and killing people. At one point, after a lot of gay sex and people not doing what he orders even though they are supposed to have “free will” and do what they want, Yahwey says “no way” and causes the world to flood. What a pouter!

The second part covers more of the sorcery of the Jesus fellow, performing transformation spells and giving free-love hippie speeches that nobody seems to listen to. Eventually, Jesus is killed, gets reanimated, and then takes off, vowing, like the Terminator, to come back. During his moments of reanimation, Jesus was the oddest zombie I’ve ever heard of. Instead of hunting the living for brains, he gave a couple more speeches and hung out at parties, showing off the holes in his hands and drinking with his friends.

It can be a bit of a rough read, but that is because it was written by a lot of different people who didn’t seem to have a solid agreement on the motivations of the main characters, and some of whom must have been rushed to publication while all they had were their basic background notes. Heck, there are sections that are just lists of things. But, if you’re banning smut, you might as well ban the poorly-written stuff as well as the good stuff. Cheers.

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The insurance nightmare continues. I have been covered under my employers’ group insurance policies for the past 21 years, and my parents’ policy prior to then. Now that I am self-employed, I have to cover my family via an individual/family policy, no mean feat considering the I have mild sleep apnea and my wife and son have asthma. Our glorious leader pushes personal responsibility and the benefits of privatized medicine and insurance. The big flaw I see with this is that even if you can afford insurance, no insurance company has to provide you coverage. Want insurance, but have any health issues, no matter how easily treated?- abandon the idea of being self-employed and join a corporation so that you can get group coverage. Still, the Presidunce pushes for switching from employer-provided insurance to employee-provided insurance. Guess who the biggest winner there is. No, not the employer, who definitely does get lower costs, and not the employee, who can now be denied coverage, but the insurance company, which no longer has to insure the workers.

I suppose there’s always the Bush Insurance Plan, which he promoted in Ohio:
“The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” Unfortunately, I am guessing Pres. Bozoman won’t be offering this service as preventive coverage.

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It is the Coeur d’Alene Wooden Boat Festival this weekend. We’ve been to the Sandpoint wooden boat festival two years running but haven’t made it to the Coeur d’Alene one yet. Maybe this will be our year. I like wooden boats. I wouldn’t want to own one, but do enjoy their look. They have much more character than an aluminum or fiberglass boat, and usually neater shapes as well. Unfortunately, they are also a lot more upkeep. Upkeep is why (assuming I don’t win millions in the lottery) I will never own one. I barely keep up with my current fiberglass boat, and basically all it needs is a good waxing on occasion. What are the odds I’d manage the sanding, staining and refinishing of a wooden boat?

If you’ve ever seen me pull up to the dock, you’d run. Er, know that I make entirely too much use of my bumpers and prayer. If not reduced to splinters, I would end up with a dock-shaped hole in the hull in no time. Really, considering my fine nautical skills, I shouldn’t be driving anything short of an aluminum boat, loaded with styrofoam and powered by a very weak trolling motor. So, no wooden boat for me, but I’m still taking the wife to check out all the fancy woodies down at the lake.

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It is hard to believe, but summer is almost done. I have yet to take the boat out on the lake and already the eggplant is rip and demanding immediate harvest; it is time for riso dell’ autonne. If only I could raise my own lamb . . . however the children refuse to eat anything they have named and I am too much the sucker for guilt. Still, we can get excellent fresh lamb from the local farmers’ market. While the cotolette alla griglia con aglio dolce would be best with home-raised lamb, I am willing to make it with local farm-raised instead.

The end of summer means fall planting. We are still hitting the upper nineties during the day, but cooling rapidly in the evening. My tomatoes are tortured, although the wasps seem perfectly content. It is time to get the new trees in the ground. I have an English Filbert, several varieties of maple, arrowwood, plums and some random bushes. Unfortunately, I have no replacement for my beloved recently-departed Burr Oak.

Ach!- So much to do and the year is almost over. The bathroom window and the swamp cooler both need to be framed out and our brilliant governor needs mocking. At least the wife’s been in overdrive lately, making pesto and salsa by the gallon, canning peaches and bringing in the fall harvest (which, yes, includes entirely too many eggplants). We should eat well this winter, if only we can find a baguette worth buying.

And on an entirely unrelated note, if you haven’t seen the movie Darwin Awards, please do so. If only for the shower scene, it is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. Sure, there isn’t a lot of plot, and it drags at times, but for the most part, this film is hilarious.

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Yay! So, it turns out my mutant bugs are ambush bugs. I need to get out and take some more pictures before they decide to take off for the season.

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And to think it started as such a promising day. After hitting 107f yesterday afternoon, it cooled off quickly, reaching 69f by 9pm. Still, I was looking forward to the rain-showers the weather fools had promised for today. Instead, the morning’s clouds have burned off and it is in the 90’s. So much for a nice rainy day. Worse still: A damned gopher ate my baby burr oak tree.

In other exciting news, thanks to an update to the BlogSecurity article, I’ve undone yesterday’s updates and switched to just using .htaccess to secure my site. The good news, I guess, is that my themes once again conform to the WordPress standard. The bad news is that not everything is working on the back-end. I had to drop the fckeditor.

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