An Inconvenient Truth

I ended up liking the movie, but Al Gore’s voice and humor ran a little long for me. He thinks he is a comedian at times, but I didn't know if he would bust jokes during this movie besides the now infamous, “I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States.”

The jokes do continue, at least into the seventh minute. There are some jokes after that, they just aren't good.

I believe in global warming. It is tragic. There is no doubt about that. I appreciate what Al Gore is doing. His presentation is, surprisingly, somewhat entertaining and only at times all about Al.

His presentation on the increasing strength of hurricanes is essential, but his focus on Hurricane Katrina is a bit lopsided. The reason Katrina was so destructive, at least to New Orleans, was due to the Big Easy’s spectacularly crappy hurricane defenses. Katrina was not nearly as strong as Hurricane Dean. In August of 2005, when Katrina came ashore, New Orleans didn’t even have protection against a 100-year storm, protection which is now being built, but it won’t come close to Amsterdam’s protection against a 10,000-year-storm. True story. That’s impressive.

Gore’s bit of the slideshow when he talks about an ice shelf in Antarctica and ice in Greenland that if melted would raise the sea level by twenty feet is frightening.

An Inconvenient Truth isn’t the “sudden jolt” Gore talks about us needing before we commit whole heartedly to saving the environment. I wish it was, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough. Unfortunately, Hollywood has raised most of the country. We only seem to be awakened to action by catastrophes. The catastrophe of global warming doesn’t move fast enough to scare a huge portion of the population into action. It should. It hasn't yet, and that is what scares me the most.

Gore leaves it at this: there is hope. We have the capacity to reduce our carbon emissions; it is the political will of the United States that needs to change. He points out that when that will has changed in the past the United States has done some awesome things. He hopes that the change happens before it is too late. I can agree with that.

Watch the movie. Check the site. Turn your computer off at night. Do something.

www.climatecrisis.net

I Heart Libraries

Today is a documentary day. Kate is at work until 10:30. I am at home with An Inconvenient Truth, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Super Size Me.

Right now I am finally watching Super Size Me. Obesity was already under scrutiny before this movie, but this film must have put the fast food industry under even more pressure because it seems to be a lot of rehash to me. I think this is the case because I read most of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and because fast food, and its unhealthy side effects, has come under so much scrutiny that it is hard to go a week without seeing a report about said subject somewhere in the media.

I don’t know if he is going to make it all thirty days. It is day 21 and poor Mr. Spurlock is having heart pain and gaining layers of fat with each day. You can tell the poor bloke is seriously concerned about this experiment.

I knew it was coming. He is finally trying to contact McDonalds. This isn’t going to go well.

Wow. Day 27. He is going to make it. This is disgusting.

After 13 calls to McDonalds Mr. Spurlock is finally able to get a hold of a lady he was looking for. She isn’t helpful.

Day 30. He has made it to the last McSupper. He gained 24.5 pounds in this time.

After he was done it took him over a year, I think, to lose that weight.

The film was powerful, depressing, and it gives you a reason to detest regular consumption of McDonalds, if you didn’t have one already.

I want to know what Mr. Spurlock is doing now. He had some show about him doing something different for 30 days at a time. I haven’t seen a commercial for that show in well over a year. I don’t think that show was successful. This isn’t that surprising. Mr. Spurlock threw his whole life into this experiment. You can tell he is seriously concerned about the fast food industry and obesity. To expect the same effort and success in a television show covering, I assume, a wide range of subjects, is too much.

He looks at pictures

There are a lot of reasons he enjoys Facebook. First among them: pictures. He loves looking at pictures of friends, old and new. There is nothing like doing some fine quality stalking by taking a flip through someone's photo album. He can bypass all that silly conversation and awkward messaging and go straight to the good stuff, the visual update.

He gets visual updates a lot from college friends. However, this is where he often gets confused. There don’t seem to be that many people leaving his college town. This seems a bit sad, unless they are all going into med school. On the bright side, UW doesn’t have a med school, so that can’t be the case. What is the case? He doesn’t know. It might be a case of too many drinks at 3^rd Street, or too many Stones (as in thirty Keystone Lights, or 30 Stones).

All he knows for sure is that he saw some of these people for the first time his freshman year. He himself took five years to graduate and has been gone a year and a half. So, he wonders, what the hell is that dude still doing in Laramie? Look, he says, you don’t need to grow up, but you do need to move on.

Winning, it turns out, isn't the only thing

I don’t know what sparked the thought, but I was thinking today about those infamous lectures you get from coaches after a bad loss or something similar. Now, I know that coaches have to get stern every once in a while. I am fine with that. And, throughout my swimming career I developed a high level of tolerance for their bullshit. The first time I really saw the shit hit the fan was when I was a sophomore in high school. The coach, Scott, sat us down in an isolated corner of the pool deck so we were walled in by a couple of diving boards. We were just a bunch of wet high school boys that were 90% naked and out for a swim. We were looking for fun. Swimming, at this point in any one of our lives, should not have been treated as a job. Scott seemed to disagree. He blew up, telling us we should be ashamed of our performance and that he thought we were so much better than that. He wasn’t proud to be a Lambkin (yes, that was our mascot) that day and he told us we shouldn’t be either. The best part, this was after a win. We almost doubled the score of the team we swam against that day. We were unstoppable that year, easily winning every dual meet and going on to win conference. I wasn’t really sure what Scott was looking for. He never said. He just said that we sucked that day. I guess it was a performance because we didn’t 1-2-3 our opponents in every event.

Scott became a notorious yeller. I hated feeling his wrath from across the pool with a glare or from a foot away when he would be foaming at the mouth during his oral tirade against my swimming abilities. So, when I qualified for State that year at Conference and even got the Lambkins a few points in the meantime, one of the reasons I was ecstatic was that I wouldn’t have to face Scott’s wrath after I got out of the pool. Actually, he was jumping up and down on the side of the pool for me. He was so happy. And, I loved seeing him so happy, even if he was only happy because he only cared about winning.

My tolerance level wasn’t tested again until college, and then many times, but I want to focus on one lecture my college coach gave us after a meet against UCSB. We were back in Mission Viejo after a long ride and the coach let the girls off the bus. He told the guys to stay where we were. I prepped myself and took a deep breath thinking it might prepare me for the absurdity of his words. Usually it did, but not this time.

The rant he launched into was easily the most morale-breaking, disgraceful outburst I have ever heard from a coach. He was really pissed we didn’t swim best in-season times up in Santa Barbara. He was pissed we lost. Blah, blah, blah. It went on for quite a while and I could see the girls out of the corner of my eye standing in the doorways of their rooms, watching it all go down.

I know he said he was ashamed to have any gear on his body representative of the school. He was also ashamed to call us a men’s team. He called us all women. Oh God, I checked between the legs just to make sure. Phew. I know there was more, but at one point it got so ugly that I just couldn’t bare it anymore. I must have thought about something else for a while like sleep, but I know I eventually was contemplating ending my swimming career right then and there.

I don’t know what he exited the bus with. I looked up after a moment and he was gone. One of the captains stood up and preached in a roundabout way that the coach was justified in saying those things. I wasn’t buying it. I still don’t buy it. I couldn’t believe this teammate was saying that we were deserving of such horrible words.

Surely, nothing the coach just said made any of us want to keep on swimming, at least for him, right? Wrong. There were several that thought otherwise. I guess what I am saying, is that some of us justified the verbal abuse in the name of sport and winning and we honestly thought the coach was justified in ripping into us like that. How incredibly stupid and ignorant to follow a coach after that kind of eruption. That was the last straw for me. He would never again be a leader for me. It was an awakening of sorts. All I needed were my teammates. I would never let him lead the team for me from then on. I know that I wasn’t seen as a leader on the team because I didn’t respect the coach after that, but I didn’t care, I wanted the team to establish expectations of a coach, and that was something that those who justified his lecture didn’t have. Perhaps I saw them as beyond saving, but I was done showering any praise on a coach to win a recruit, to calm my teammates, or to paint a pretty picture of the coach-athlete dynamic at the university.

Opinions of the Day

Worst marriage advice actually given to me:

Keep separate checking accounts.

Worst interview question asked of me:

Why are manhole covers round?

St. Vrain Road

Sweet. I'm just testing out Blogger's new video upload feature. This video is from the summer of 2005, the summer we discovered St. Vrain Road, a nasty 40 mph ride. Erik and Kyle lead the way on their boards. Next is Wes and Collin. And, yes. The volume is up all the way. This was taken with an old digital camera that didn't record sound. Classic.

Delicious

One of the best segments I have ever seen on The Daily Show. A history lesson. Observe.

Shock Effect

A horrible crime has been committed in Merseyside, England. An 11-year-old boy was shot for no reason besides maybe a show of power by one of two local gangs. It is sad, really, but something stood out in this Guardian article. It was Gordon Brown’s description of the killing as a “heinous crime that shocked the whole of the country”.

It was one murder, and yet gang violence like this in America is rarely the focus of the entire country, and when it is, it never shocks the whole country. It happens every day because we love our guns.

Wouldn’t you want to be shocked?

And....action!

I was in a movie today. You might be confused; I was—most of the day. My acting career was launched by one line as an extra in a movie that is being shot here in town. Yep. It’s true. The director needed some people for a classroom shoot. I emailed the director. The director emailed back. Ah, the wonders of craigslist.

I have no acting experience whatsoever. The most, I guess you could say, was a drama class my freshman year of high school. I have always wanted to give it a try, which may stun most of you because acting, I think, goes against the grain of my entire being. I don’t consider myself to be loud, boisterous, or one that loves cracking jokes and breaking into monologues for the entertainment of anyone within earshot. I keep to myself mostly. I am shy in large groups. I don’t speak loudly. In fact, I mumble a lot and you would not want me addressing a graduating class. Ever.

Try I did today though, to act that is. I had one line. “Why do you want to know that?” I am sure I looked the fool, but I didn’t really care. I think this movie has bigger things to worry about than my line screwing up its popularity, success, impact, or whatever you want to call it. Honestly, I loved being there. It was fascinating to see the work that goes into filming a movie. I admit it, at times it was extremely boring. There are swaths of nothingness that the actors, and especially the extras, are subjected to, but I amused myself with constant observation and a running commentary in my head.

The commentary went something like this.

God it’s early. It’s 8 am. I’ve been here an hour and haven’t done anything.

When the actors look at me do they know I am sort of scared about this? Do they know I don’t know crap about acting?

Are we really filming in this classroom? This place is a dump.

Who are these people? Who makes movies in Milwaukee?

Why did that guy just laugh…? That wasn’t funny. Wow, do all actors have a bad sense of humor?

Stop talking to me, really. I don’t know you and you aren’t very good at telling stories. Shouldn’t you be better at that because you are sort of trying to do that for a living?

What? You have a career doing shoots for Kohl’s? Crazy. I didn’t think that was possible.

That’s a nice camera. Can I ask how much that costs? No. That would be rude.

Free soda, chips, coffee, and pizza. That’s nice since I’m not getting a dollar for this and spending nine bucks on parking.

Oh my gosh. The director just gave me a line. Do I have to speak? I bet he can see my pulse from across the room. I can feel it bloating my neck out with every beat. Please calm down before you have to talk.

It went on like that most of the day. I ended up being quite impressed by the abilities of the actors around me that were in lead roles. Having been there today I know I couldn’t have delivered those lines like they did. They sounded good, but they may look horrible onscreen. I don’t really know. The crew impressed me too. The cameraman had this idea about how every line should sound and whenever he spoke up about it he was always right. The way he said it just struck a “duh” through me. The director even has a role. He had a few lines today and made each take sound different but good.

I don’t know if my experience today was what I expected it to be. It seemed to fit in perfectly at times with my imagination, but at other times, not so much. I think it kept me interested enough to try something like this again. Maybe it is too early to say such things. Well, I just did.

Are you looking for something?

I am going to take a break now from writing and finish Bill Bryson’s I’m A Stranger Here Myself. Once again, Bryson hasn’t failed to make me laugh out loud several times. He makes the ordinary extraordinarily funny for me. He is a genius. I envy his abilities at times. After I finish it I am going to the library to pick up I Am Legend, a vampire tale that has been made into a movie with Will Smith.

Okay, I am reading now...

…Haggis. *Writing to self* Don’t forget this word. It is sheep intestine. You had a Braveheart Burger at some pub so old that Rob Roy used to drink there. The Braveheart Burger was like any other burger except the patty was made of Haggis.

A great quote. “To ensure that no one buys anything, they generally leave these sections unmanned. I believe there are whole floors at John Lewis of Oxford Street that have not seen a member of staff since just before the war.” Bryson on shopping for furniture in London. I realize this might not make any sense to you if you haven't been inside a John Lewis store, a Selfridges, or a Harrods, or, for that matter, been on Oxford Street. Sorry. I can't help you there.

“Where’s your primary shut-off then?”

“They forgot that, too.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

“Well, what would you do if you had a burst pipe?”

Now this I knew. First, I would hop around excitedly, going “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” as you might if, say, you looked down and unexpectedly found your legs on fire. Then I would try to stuff something like a sofa cushion into the leak, making it worse. Then I would hop about some more. Finally, I would dash out into the street and flag down passing vehicles.

…The above passage is Bryson’s imagined conversation with a washer repairman. Bryson absolutely fears confronting the handy man who knows Bryson doesn’t know anything about the problem, whether it be cars, appliances, or a computer. I have that same fear when it comes to cars.

…In the last chapter Bryson addresses why they moved to America from England.

There is a great deal about America that is deeply appealing. There are all the obvious things that outsiders always remark on—the ease and convenience of life, the friendliness of the people, the astoundingly abundant portions, the intoxicating sense of space, the cheerfulness of nearly everyone who serves you, the notion that almost any desire or whim can be simply and instantly gratified.

My problem was that I had grown up with all this, so it didn’t fill me with quite the same sense of novelty and wonder. I failed to be enchanted, for instance, when people urged me to have a nice day.

He goes on, but the whole of the last chapter was a fabulous end to another good Bryson tale.

Tonight on TV

The Man. The Myth. The Legend. Well, whatever he is, Barack Obama is on The Daily Show tonight. Just a heads up for those of you out there that have cable television.

Dirty Dean

I was watching the news this morning and some CNN correspondent was riding out Hurricane Dean at a resort south of Cancun. In the background I saw waves and wind battering the exact place Kate and I honeymooned almost two months ago. The CNN guy was riding the storm out at our honeymoon location.

At first I was like, yeah, Aventura Spa Palace. Oh, wait. This isn't cool. We really enjoyed everything about that place and the people that work there and now it is all getting destroyed.

It was a bit surreal to see the landscape of the resort transformed into a raging sea. I have been trying to find footage of it on YouTube. No luck yet.

*I've been waiting for over two years to use this blog title.

He lives in Wisconsin

Standing in the Pick N Save parking lot a thought occurred to him. He lives in Wisconsin. He isn’t just visiting this place. This is where he makes his residence with his new wife who is rooting herself here with her new job.

As far as he can tell, his approach to Wisconsin has been similar to his approach to a new country. He may be here for a little bit, but he isn’t about to call it home. He’ll pick and choose through Wisconsin’s offerings and weigh later the benefits of a life lived here versus a life lived where he feels at home in Colorado.

There are a few benefits. He enjoys the new physical landscape of the earth. The air is different. The forests are thick. The water meanders more casually in this flat ground than the jagged surface of his home. He is told that people here are amiable for the most part, but his situation has led him to believe otherwise. His situation being: a general frustration with most things Wisconsin, which leads to a nitpicky, highly critical evaluation of most things Wisconsin.

I don’t know how much I can blame him. However, I am worried about him focusing too much on the negative and denying Milwaukee its right to be explored, folded, prodded, and experimented with. I also am worried about you reading this and saying out loud to yourself, “Oh damn, Bryce. Just get over it already” or “Not this again. Click.” I can’t blame you for that either, but a man’s got to vent, right? Even if it is to a keyboard.

Padilla

First read this over at The Daily Dish.

Then read this.

It is all incredibly disturbing. When I was writing about what I saw on the news yesterday, the Padilla verdict was read. To be honest, I had forgotten a lot about that trial and didn't feel I could write about it with any insight, not to mention humor. I knew I could count on Mr. Sullivan jogging my memory a bit.

Cable News Roundup

Right now Anne Coulter is on Fox News in a round table discussion of OJ’s book being published. I hope that Fox News is the only 24-hour news channel that still gives this woman air time. I say this because there isn’t anything that Coulter could do that Fox News would banish her for.

MSNBC is hitting the weather report strong right now. They are showing Houston right now being dumped on by tropical depression Erin. There are stranded cars, people wading through the water, and thick clouds. Nothing appears to be severe or life threatening, but we love disaster, don’t we? I mean, if there is anything that can bring us all together, it’s a disaster of some relation to the weather, the earth, terrorism, etc.

Whatever happened to Headline News? I remember it actually covering the news back in the day when they would loop the stories they have and then work in new ones as the news came to them. It was very straight forward, not that much bullshit for a cable news channel. Now I rarely find worthy news on the channel. Instead I can rely on Headline News now to give me updates on Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, K-Fed, Paris Hilton, and Nicole Richie. If it is not that, then it is Nancy Grace or Glenn Beck. Nancy is always running her mouth about another kidnapping or disappearances as if she is going to solve all the cases by talking them to death. Beck, well, I can’t watch his show. I get my Beck clips on The Daily Show.

Now all the cable news channels are paying close attention to Hurricane Dean. “This storm means business,” the CNN Weatherman says. The channels all want so desperately for a horrible hurricane season. They talked it up last year—the first hurricane season since Katrina—but the season sputtered out without even moderate damage to the Caribbean region. That was one of the media’s biggest embarrassments last year. Nothing has changed. This season is supposed to be intense, severe, and extremely taxing on all those living in the paths of hurricanes. I just hope it is so cable news can use all their cool storm-tracking tools, display neat storm graphics, compose new hurricane theme music, and get there word-sleuths on the job by coming up with something like “Hurricane Hysteria”, “Katrina Part Deux”, or “Disaster in Daytona.”

Running for office?

"You don't want to use the word "outsider" too much in your campaign, however. So feel free to have your team of seasoned campaign managers, political operatives, and speech writers use synonyms like "grassroots", "maverick", and "populace". Just make sure no one looks at your business cards and decides to use "Billionaire Financier". The important thing is you know nothing about Washington and don't have a clue how the system operates." - Jon Stewart, America

Memories of Summer

The days growing longer.

Hot afternoons of disc golf at the Loo. Losing discs. A toothless grin finding them.

Going on a run with Wes.

Trips to Chipotle.

Redbox rentals.

Knowing that the summer was going to come to an abrupt, unusual ending.

Work coming to a close at Starbucks.

Freshly cut grass.

Beautiful, dry, Colorado days.

Desire for change.

Resisting change.

Short reunions.

Long goodbyes.

And a long road ahead of us.

*A nod to mPb. I am not stealing a blog title, but as soon as I wrote memories of I thought of Warmy blog titles.

Seriously, Dick

Ah. Years ago the University of Wyoming was proud to be the alma mater of the Veep. I would be too, if Cheney didn't pull a 180.

Cribs - Milwaukee Edition

This is for all of you that might not be able to view this video on facebook because you don't have an account. So, Mom and Dad, I hope you enjoy. We took a longer, more in-depth look at the apartment in another video, but I have been having trouble uploading it.

Attacked Again

As the country watches and waits for news from Huntington, Utah, where six miners are believed trapped since Monday, the Middle East has erupted in cheers over the second successful terrorist attack in two weeks in the United States.

From the Anbar Province to the residence of Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, members of Just Into Hating All ‘Dem Independent Steamrollers of Truth from the States, or J.I.H.A.D.I.S.T.S, celebrated word of the collapsed mine by stomping on effigies of President Bush and chanting “Death to America” all while firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Shortly after the mine collapse Osama Bin Laden released a tape, apparently made months ago, in which he details the history of the making of the I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River in 1967. Bin Laden’s first illegitimate son, Ahmed, born to Bin Laden when he was just three-years-old, is believed to have been smuggled into the United States in an opium crate early in 1967. At that time, Ahmed was just shy of his seventh birthday, but already had a devout hatred of the free world.

“Praise be to Ahmed!” Bin Laden says at the end of the video. “My son is the true mastermind of this glorious act.”

But just how did Ahmed bring the bridge down? Experts say that the reinforcing gussets of the I-35W Bridge were put under extraordinary pressure, but they should have held despite extra weight from ongoing construction on the bridge. This is where the mystery begins. No one knows for sure, but it is rumored that Ahmed, after making his way to the Midwest, was fishing by the Mississippi that fateful day in 1967. In his pack he only had a rationed amount of falafel (enough to enable completion of the mission), a vest laden with C4, and a few structurally deficient gussets. Sometime that day Ahmed was able to make the switch, putting his gussets in the real gusset pile, and being sure to put them at the top.

U.S. Intelligence reports have come up with nothing on Ahmed or his whereabouts. It is rumored in the Middle East that if Ahmed could have made it east, he was to use the C4 in another attack. Superstition among locals in Afghanistan is that he failed to make it to New York City, and that his C4 was found decades later by Timothy McVeigh in his hometown of Pendleton, NY, thus, sparking McVeigh’s interest in bomb-making. Not until the most recent Bin Laden tape had authorities begun to investigate the McVeigh-Al Qaeda connection.

Regardless of how the attacks were carried out, it has become clear to this nation’s citizens that the Heartland of America is now under attack. Al Qaeda has struck a popular destination for millions of Midwesterners and has now lashed out at the heart of the coal industry, thus making America rely even more on the oil in the hands of its enemies.