Lest there be any question about what "imports" are . . .

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
--George w. Bush

Beaverton, OR
09/25/2000

On 2 year's rest . . .

So a few days ago I went and tried, stressing that word, to play full-court basketball for the first time in a long while. Going in there with almost two year's rest I assumed I'd totally dominate. Actually, I set the bar a little lower - being able to walk again within 3-4 days would be a stunning success, but I was content with survival. I stretched and jogged around a little bit before we started - this part went marvelously. I even made a few shots in the warm up. Then we began . . . Now let me say in all fairness, I can do 3-4 miles on the treadmill without much struggle, it's not like I'm totally hopeless or anything. But after roughly 2 minutes of play, all of my cells, except for 3 or 4 of 'em, were on fire. I was huffing and puffing so hard I was afraid I was gonna do structural damage to the building. At one point the guy I was guarding got an outlet pass and went flying down the court towards his goal. Now I knew exactly what I needed to do, I just needed to run him down and get in front of him. He had a little head start, but I knew I could catch him . . . At least my mind knew it. With literally no one around me I took two quick steps towards him . . . I was off to the races, or so I thought. Then, like some kind of drunk panda bear, the top half of my body kept moving in the direction I wanted it to, but the feet were quite content to be stationary. I fell flat on my face at midcourt, skidded to an ugly halt, and my guy scored. A thing of beauty. It's rough to spontaneously fall down on your face, all alone, for no apparent reason. All the guys were good enough to not say anything to me about it, but there was no need - any semblance of pride in my hoops prowess is gone. I'll keep going back though. The moral of the story: I should've probably stretched more or at least have worn protective gear with an oxygen mask.

So shopping is a REALLY big deal I gather . . .

I saw this bizarre article and couldn't help but share. I mean, I get that you wanna save a few dollars or find that special something, but, come on . . .

Fantasy Football

So it's the day before Thanksgiving and things at work here are slow to say the least. So I decided to research a little for my fantasy football picks this weekend. I discovered what millions already know, - there's WAY too much information out there. I just watched videos with expert commentary and everything. How do you get to be a Fantasy Football expert?! Those were NOT the guys getting dates in high school. From what I gather, it's all these guys do. There are pages and pages of "recommendations" and "rankings" to help out those of us who, you know, can't dedicate more time to Fantasy Football than we do sleeping. These guys tried very hard to crack jokes and act like this is entirely like hosting a day time talk-show or something, . . . didn't work. Shockingly, these weren't the best-looking guys you've ever seen and u can kinda picture them holed up in their parent's basements with 3 or 4 computer screen pouring through really important information, like how does Drew Brees do in away games on astroturf in the 3rd Sunday of November with a republican in the white house and a slight bruise on his non-throwing wrist. Anyway, I was quickly over-whelmed with advice so I made my little picks, and well, . . . I'm headed back to real life now as opposed to fantasy football life. Do you think those guys make more $ than I do? . . .

I suppose there are worse things to collect

Just when you thought nothing too interesting ever happens in Canada . . .

You know what to do . . . right?!

So you may not know that I have 4 kids (ages 7, 5, 3, and 1). Well my wife left tonight to go to DC where her sister just had a baby. That leaves me home to "babysit." (I've never understood why when the dad stays with the kids it's called "babysitting." But that's no big deal.) My wife is great, and I could write all day about why, but one thing she does is worry that I'm gonna miss something important - yes, there's good reason for her to do that. But for the last several weeks she's be writing various lists to remind me of the million or so things that I could forget to do while she's gone. I get that there's a lot to remember and I'm a remedial Mr Mom, but I started to chuckle (in secret of course) at all the reminders. This morning though was the ultimate question from my wife:

Her: "You know what to do if you guys run out of food, right?"

(Long, awkward pause where I looked for her to show a sign of sarcasm, you know, like a smirk or laugh . . .)

(I'm still waiting for that sign . . .)

I must be worse at this than I thought . . . oh well, I know that if we run out of food we go to my parent's house, so at least I've got a good answer. =)

Rodent Power

So the next time your flight is late, you might look into this as the cause . . .

My favorite part is that the plane is still grounded.

Whoopin' up on the Horned Frogs

A buddy of mine IM'd me the words to the BYU Fight Song this morning. (BYU's my alma-mater) I gotta give 'em props for beating #17 TCU last night on the road. Unfortunately for me I now have the fight song in my head on continuous repeat . . . Thanks for that!!!
But seriously, this is one of the biggest wins we've had in several years. Here's cool photo from the game. Hopefully things are looking up for the much-maligned Cougars. I'm looking for John Beck to start getting a little more national attention - he's got huge numbers and has been fairly consistent. If we were Notre Dame, he'd have been a preseason Heisman guy, but, as my ND friends remind me, we're not Notre Dame. I'd sure rather have Beck than Brady Quinn!! Anyway, just good to celebrate a big win!!!!

Pirates Everywhere . . . and they talk

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

He's got a point . . .

"Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought
most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is
that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than
beasts." -- John Locke

Cub Scouts

So tonight we took the whole family over to the park next to the elementary school when the local cub scout group was signing kids up. We wanted my 2nd grader to check it out to see if he was interested. I came away with an impression I didn't expect. As we were listening to the leaders give their schpeel (I'm sure that's a word in some language) I was deeply impressed with how committed they were and how they seemed genuinely interested in helping the boys. I see and hear lots of negative stereotypes about men . . . many of which might have some basis. But these guys flew in the face of that. Totally selfless, not too busy for their kids, even not too busy for someone else's kids, very impressive . . . I see a world that steers boys in lots of different directions, too bad more of us aren't more willing to give back a little bit more.

Fear Factor - Update 2

So I watched a new 2-hour special on CNN about Osama Bin Laden the other night. It was pretty interesting and made for good TV. And I got thinking . . . If the guy is sitting in his cave watching CNN (pretty likely), I just watched his favorite TV show!! How victorious he must feel that Americans think about him so much that we made a 2 hour special, and hyped it relentlously, about pretty much everything that we know about this guy's life. That's gotta be pretty satisfying for him . . .

Fear Factor - Update 1

Check out this article about the "Fear Multiplier." Good stuff from Stratfor.com (only the summary is shown):

Airline Incidents: Fear as Force Multiplier

By Fred Burton

During the past month, since British authorities announced the disruption of a bomb plot involving airliners, there has been a worldwide increase in security awareness, airline security measures -- and fear among air passengers. At least 17 public incidents involving airline security have been reported in the United States and parts of Europe since Aug. 10. Most of these were innocuous, but many resulted in airliners making emergency landings off their scheduled routes, sometimes escorted by fighter aircraft.

The spate of incidents -- each of which rings up significant financial costs to the airline company and governments involved and causes inconvenience and delays for travelers -- is a reminder that terrorism, philosophically, is not confined to the goal of filling body bags or destroying buildings. At a deeper level, it is about psychology and the "propaganda of the deed." And as far as al Qaeda is concerned, it is also about economic warfare: Osama bin Laden personally has stated that one of the group's strategic objectives is to "bleed America to the point of bankruptcy."

To say that the governments and industries targeted by terrorism face difficult choices is a gross understatement. The problem lies in the fact that decision-makers not only must protect the public against specific groups using known tactics (in al Qaeda's case, bombs and liquid explosives) but also must protect themselves in the face of public opinion and potential political blowback. Officials naturally want to be perceived as doing everything possible to prevent future acts of violence; therefore, every threat -- no matter how seemingly ridiculous -- is treated seriously. Overreaction becomes mandatory. Politicians and executives cannot afford to be perceived as doing nothing.

This powerful mandate on the defensive side is met, asymmetrically, on the offensive side by a force whose only requirements are to survive, issue threats and, occasionally, strike -- chiefly as a means of perpetuating its credibility.


Again, what amazing power we've chosen to give these people . . .

Fear Factor

Over the last several years it's hard to ignore all the things we're told to be scared of. And I don't just mean scared, but we're told we should be petrified and totally rearrange our lives because of these things. I don't mean to say that these things aren't a huge deal for those directly impacted by them, but the mass media has had great success in getting us all hyped up and keeping us glued to the various screens in our lives. Some of these are massive problems impacting millions, others are things that we're not sure have impacted anyone . . . yet . . . , but nonetheless, we're obsessed with some of these topics and living in fear in some way or another. Here are just a few that come to mind (as you read these, just think back to some of the news covered these things have garnered):

- Bird Flu
- Global Warming
- Terrorism
- Politicians
- Shark attacks
- Hurricanes
- Terror (not sure how that different from Terrorism, but the President says it so often I thought it deserved it's own category)
- War
- Famine
- Health empidemics
- Sky rocketing Oil Prices
- Asteriods/Comets destroying the planet
- Earthquakes
- Chickens and/or baseball players on steriods
- Random crime
- Identity theft
- Irradiated produce
- Tweezers on airplanes (along with snakes on airplanes, apparently)

I could keep going, but my point is that I hope we don't really let this stuff dominate our thoughts/actions. I know people who do obsess about all these topics. Politicians use these things to push our panic buttons pretty effectively - neither major party is close to innocent on that one. Osama must just love it when we crank up the "Terror Threat Level" to purple or something when he simply says we should be scared. That's a lot of power. I'm pretty certain if the media (but not the military) ignored the guy a bit, we'd suddenly feel quite a bit safer . . . and we'd be no less threatened.

Our hightened sense of fear makes us really overreact when there is a bit of news. For instance, how does it make sense that North Korea shoots some missiles into the Sea of Japan and world oil prices soar . . .

We gotta put things in perspective, but it's difficult to do that when these negative, forbodding topics are all we see or hear about. We should do what we can about these things, but we should do other things too!! There's lots of good out there, and people living pretty content lives. I wish it were just as easy to write a list of that kind of stuff based on what I see on the news . . .

Little absence

It's been well over a year since I posted on this blog, I'm determined to get started again. I just figured out how to post quickly from my mobile phone too, so given how much I use that thing, you should be seeing more posts for that reason alone. I hope u enjoy . . .

HTF