we went to the Westcott House during our “hometown” weekend with the family. The Wescott House is a House designed that Frank Llyod Wright designed back in like 1908 or something in Springfield Ohio (our hometown) and it’s been a dilapidated crumbling wreck and no one knew what the hell it was.

Then the owner or one of the tenants (it was broken up into apartments, but NOT demolished to do so) got the Wright Foundation it take notice and they bought it and restored it, and now it’s hailed as one of his masterpieces.

Anyway there are pictures (click pic above for the set)… but none of the inside because we weren’t allowed… but I wanted to show this one:

I think it’s to keep skateboarders off the short wall on a long slanting slope that is practically skateboarder bait…

I bow to your greatness…

X Marks the spot… for X’s found in the world around you.

www.flickr.com More photos in X Marks the Spot

Motivator lets your use any online picture, even your flickr photos.

Enlarge

I posted about her earlier this week, and someone gave me a name, this article kinda tells a bunch. Or you can hear this article read by the author on NPR with lots of sound bites and extra stuff.

Bush has announced a new candidate for the Supreme Court opening left by O’Conner,

Thus proving Bush has a problem with issues regarding reality.

You’ll want this just in case you ever get attcked by vampires on the bus or have to perform an emergency exorcism.

Harriet Miers is out of the running now, thank god, but she certainly will not be forgotten in this series of correspondence between herself and GWB over several years.

If you don’t feel like visiting, here’s the general jist:

HM: You are so cool!
GB: No, you are!
HM: No, you are!
GB: No, you are!
HM: No way, you are so much cooler than me!
GB: Aww, stop! You’re making me blush.
HM: But you’re cute when you blush, you know.
GB: You’re so sweet.
HM: No, you are!
GB: No, you are!
HM: No, you are!

Anyone else notice the new Overstock.com commericial has the same chic they always use but now she has a slight eastern/northern european accent now? WTF? Have they always overdubbed her? Or did they just start? And why do they think I want her to bend over in front of the camer and wag her bobkas at me?

Found this one Fark today…I might make this into christmas cards.

I’m hearing Florida already has power coming up in some of the harder hit areas of Hurricane Wilma already.

I’ve been saying this since the whole FEMA scandal started in New Orleans so I thought I’d finally put it here… As much as I hate George Bush, (and believe me my foot would be on the accelerator not the brake if he was in front of my car,) I have to wonder if he ever thought of making his brother Jeb in charge of FEMA, but didn’t follow through for fears of political outcry. If if he didn’t, why not?

As much as I hate to say it, I think he might possibly be the best qualified man in the country to be the head of FEMA after all the hurricanes in Florida in the past few years if all I see on the news is even halfway accurate. I would bet cash money the horrific man-made results from Katrina would not be the news we got on TV.

A Bush or not, you can’t deny that Florida has it’s crap together on this kinda of disaster and Jeb Bush and his team just always seems to pull it out. I remember visiting Florida less than a month after the BIG hurricane last October and there weren’t any signs of upheaval other than a few missing palm trees. It was damned impressive.

Yeah, sure, it does smack of nepotism, but if the relative is honestly qualified I’d have done it anyway and let them argue that the only mark against him was his being a relative (and that whole Teri Schiavo thing of course). Politics aside, they certainly couldn’t deny his results.

Or could they? Maybe someone in Florida can correct me if I’m mislead… I only have second hand reports and news outlets on Florida goings on.

They got put on US stamps last month and now… the ‘Muppets’ may be back on primetime TV!

I think the two old balcony guys would be a GREAT American Idol Simon.

The Whitehouse doens’t like the onion using the Presidential seal, no word on if they asked SNL or any number of other comedy shows and such the same thing.

I think it’s an easy fix, just make one up in crayon and fingerpaints.

Just a quick followup on the other movies we rented…

Longest Yard: I had not seen the orginal, but Mr Man had and he was very pleased by the remake and said it was a well done faithful remake and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Not oscar material, but then I tend to not like that stuff anyway. I’m a MOVIE girl.

Robots: Meh. Some cute parts, some little Star Wars nods that Ewan MacGregor did the lead voice, but overall a good kid film adults will likely be bored silly like we were. Not one belly laugh or even a polite snicker unlike other CG animated films like Shrek which get the Too damn good for kids” Jen Seal Of Approval.

Luther: One of the better movies we rented actually. Mr Man didn’t want to watch it at all really, but nothing else was on so he said what the hell. I think he though he’d just fall sleep on the couch during it and not have to deal with it, but it ended up really fascinating us both with the story on why his fight (and others in support of him) against the practice of “indulgences” and holy relics in the church was so scandalous. Being raised whitebread protestant, but not lutheran, such practices were alien to me really other than hearing of them.

When we had the chance to turn over to something on, we switched over to Tivo told it to record the program and finished watching Luther. That’s a commendation for you, and we’re NOT religious people - at all. (I prefer the term “godless heathen” actually, but I am always fascinated by religious history.) But our human history is largely a religious history so if you like one you tend to go for the other no matter what your religious stance is.

And it was nicely costumed, and largely VERY accurate historically. The parts how he met his wife (an escaped nun) were simplified, but the results were essentially the same so no harm done there it think.

Now I will say they did, wisely I think, leave out his (what we modernly would think would be extreme) anti-Jewish views that he actually preached and published later than the movie covered - but to be fair, such views were pretty standard in the middle ages especially among the christian religious. To be honest, they just didn’t know any better as those had been the mainstream beliefs for hundreds of years to that point. His views, being high profile since his works were one of the few being read by the common man, did manage to influence Germans for hundreds of years, Hitler among them. Leaving that out would have been irresponsible for a biographical movie, but this instead was just a peek into just a 10-15 year chunk of his life and how it changed the world as we know it.

Overall, it was a good movie that history folks will enjoy I think. Plus Joseph Fiennes is hot. There area, alas, no butt shots to be had (I was hoping) under all those monk robes. He does have really pretty eyes though and as I’ve confessed before that’s a huge plus for me.

I wrote about it here once, but today is his birthday.

Happy Birthday Chris!

Once more the independent film media love and raving word of mouth led me horridly astray. Each time reminds me why I don’t usually second guess my first instinct with little films that the intarweb and critics “love”. I usually sit there wondering how much time it has left before I can watch something better on TV.

Rented Napoleon Dynamite tonight - meh. Parts were funny, even a couple laugh out loud moments. Most of the others were uncomfortably awkward and wondering what the point was. Maybe I live/d a little too much in the nerd life for this to not feel otherwise.

I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why a movie set in 2004 (even in Idaho) the cast dressed like they were in a 1970’s sitcom. I mean the brother’s hot girlfriend gives Napoleon a cassette tape - A CASSETTE TAPE FOR GODS SAKE! I haven’t even seen one of those in at least 8 years. ALL the electronics, even in the non-Dynamite household scenes were circa 1980. It’s like they bought out a thriftshop, like in the thrift scene, and used it all for set decoration and props.

I looked up and found out it’s an almost entirely mormon (BYU) cast and crew, which could explain the absence of cursing and probably the keen fashion sense, and it was shot in the writer’s hometown in Idaho. If it was intended as a kind of bio-fic epic tribute to nerdom lost - it could have been a period piece very easily.

(BTW I had moon boots when I was about 12 and I loved them because they were mui comfy and sqooshy.)

Other movies I picked up and may discuss later: Robots, Luther (medieval angst baby, yah!), and Longest Yard remake. Why, yes, we are eclectic movie-loving people.

Three funny little videos. Watch them all. The third one is political, the first two aren’t.

This guy is a master of The Art of Retouching. You’ll never look at a magazine cover the same way again. Roll over each pic to see the original shot. I found myself rolling back and forth dozen of times to spot all the changes. You will too.

A photoshop master indeed - I bow in his general direction.

This Glenn Feron, a white dude btw, seems to have the market cornered on black women. It’s interesting to see the boobs and butts get bigger but the thighs and waists get smaller. I wonder if the white models get smaller butts or what?

I did find it extremely comforting to see Halle Berry has bags under her eyes too.

(Pssst: This is entry #2700)

When we go to the Florida Keys we gorge ourselves on seafood every meal - tuna, dolphinfish (mahimahi), grouper, scallops, conch, swordifsh, marlin, shark, - you name it we’ll eat it happily (as long as it’s hot. We no likey sushi.) Even at breakfast we’ll get shrimp tossed in an omelete because we can. I bet we probably even sweat seawater by the time our trip is over we eat so much of it. As a result we’re pretty exacting about well done seafood to the point we might even be called snobs about it, so when someone gets it right we’ll come back again and again. (Seafood should never be “rubbery”, and fish should never be “flaky”.) Naturally, living in Ohio doesn’t make finding good fish places easy.

So when I find a good one I’m sure as hell going to crow about it, becasue I have two beliefs about food:

1: Ask a fat person if you want to find a great restaurant in a strange town.
1: Fat people never lie about great food.

I was issued a challenge to take him to “a restaurant I’ve never been to before” for his birthday (yesterday - he’s 40 now!). Let me say finding it turned out to be a daunting task since he and the guys he hangs with at work have basically taken it as a mission to eat at every foreign or chain restaurant in the Blue Ash, Springdale, Tricounty, and anyplace else along the east and north edge of 275. I was running out of options fast after 3 days of looking online. Damn him and his adventurous eating!

I finally settled on a seafood place - Bonefish Grill - since we’re all about good, and well done, seafood and haven’t had any in a few months.
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Not what I was expecting when I saw, and clicked on, “furryfriday” tag in flickr. Highly relieved though.

Right on schedule:Hurricane Wilma is hitting flickr as well.

Headache for third straight day. Done nothing but sleep in my comfy chair.

Gwen Stefani has problems with her shit (via Dynagirl)

I love my slippers. With projected natural gas prices I’m gonna be loving them long term.

I also love my friends and all but some of them need some kicks to the head.

I think it’s interesting that it takes Bush getting an all time low approval rating (39%) to suddenly want the UN to step in to investigate the news from Syria instead of just wreaking “justice” on his own, as is his habit.