Where the bailout money should be going

/ Shane / 1 Comment

To Kevin Bacon, that’s who!

It has recently been brought to my attention that Kevin Bacon lost all of his money to Bernie Madoff and has gone so far as to say he is looking for work. This is obviously a national tragedy and needs to be remedied immediately.

At first I thought, that is ridiculous! If Kevin Bacon wanted a Tremors 5, he snaps his fingers and it’s done. Are you telling me they aren’t filming a Surreal Life somewhere? “Maybe he has standards,” said Sara. She makes a good point.

But I think Nathan and I figured it out. The perfect quick buck for a Kevin Bacon that is still somewhat respectable. Dancing with the Stars!

Who would stand a chance with Kevin Bacon rocking the footloose dance? Nobody, that’s who.

Worst case, he can always fall back on the Bacon Brothers. And worst, worst case I think I can speak for everyone when I say he can fall back on the other, less famous bacon brothers if he absolutely has to.

Huzzah!

/ Shane / 6 Comments

Sara got wind of a joint service project that our old chapter of ΑΦΩ was putting on with another chapter in Valparaiso, which is much closer to us. We decided to attend, figuring that it would be nice to get out and do something and also to let Evie run around outside for a while and get a chance to get outside of the city. Also, we invited Nathan and he caught the bus down and then hitched a ride to the project with us. He sort of bridged the gap since he still knew some people there and also helped take a turn wrangling Evie.

It has been a long time since we have participated in a service project and it really felt good to be out there using the old muscles to help out. We mostly hauled logs and moved brush piles, though some other people helped build a shed type thing and others split logs. Scouting projects were always my favorite projects because they always involved some sort of manly manual labor as opposed to say, visiting at a nursing home, which is also very important but an entirely different sort of service. I also enjoy the longer projects.

Our trip started off very badly since there was an accident blocking like 100 feet of road directly in front of the highway on-ramp. We somehow missed the entrance that was supposed to be in 5 miles and had to continue on to the next one. So, for the next 40 minutes, we were picking a meandering course through the towns along the highway, crossing periodically under the highway saying, “Hey, there it is!” It certainly wasn’t the best start to the morning (although, despite our lateness, we still beat every Purdue person there by like an hour!)

Anyway, Evie had a blast on our “adventure” running around through the woods, finding paths, pinecones and a feather and looking at the geese. She didn’t seem to get tired at all, she always wanted to go, go, go until we left around nap time and she crashed with her head on Sara’s shoulder standing in line at Culver’s.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. It turns out that this wasn’t your average scouting project. The area we were clearing and the “shed” we were building was in an area used by Kanarak, a Live Action Role Playing (LARP) group.

 

I don’t know that I’ve seen all that many areas that are used exclusively by LARPers, but I would think this place would put most of them all to shame. Lots of woods and paths, a large wooden palisade, a nice looking building with what looked like gas lights on the front and which which I believe was being made into blacksmith’s shop and another building going up along side of it. This was some serious backdrop. Two of the LARPers were there helping and they were very nice.

Now, I am not one to make fun of such a thing. Lord knows that if certain events in my life had gone one way or the other, I could very easily have found myself running around in the woods with a cape. Furthermore, if you laugh in the face of a man with a sword, we shall see who laughs last. And, lastly and quite honestly, my brother and I did spent a bit of time on Sunday trying to figure out a way in which we could find ourselves sometime in the future beating on people with duct-tape wrapped padded broomsticks. It would be far from the first time for either of us, although we mostly just used to beat on each other.

But my problem is this: how was this related to the boy scouts? When I came out to volunteer my time, I sort of imagined I’d be helping set up the camp so some little kids could have a fun time out in the woods, the way I did when I was a youngster in boy scouts. Now instead I found myself moving firewood for 40 year old accountants with a lot of free time. If you can spend that kind of time and money on a costume, then you aught to be the one out there clearing trees. It’s your hobby after all.

I dug around a little on their website and I found out they are indeed affiliated with the BSA as a venture crew. So I guess in a way we were helping scouting, however, in order to be eligible for the venture crew you have to be 14 – 21 years of age. That means we might be talking about boy scouts who were older than some of the volunteers! And looking at some of the pictures and videos, I’m not sure there are all that many people involved who are actually scouts. Most people looked older (though I freely admit I am a poor judge of age). On top of that, their forum boasts 104 members, which means that their organization is roughly 5 times larger than the chapter that set the project up. Perhaps they should be volunteering for ΑΦΩ instead of the other way around!

So that sort of didn’t sit right with me. It just seems like time would be better spent helping people who need help. But, nonetheless, I had a good time doing some work and being out doors and so did Evie, so I guess you can’t ask for much more than that.

I also had fun dominating Nathan in Marvel Scene-it, though most nights we went to bed too early to play many games. We were supposed to work on the garden on Sunday, but after working outside all day Saturday I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to anymore.  My arms were a little sore. Well, guess what? I got my wish because we got a big snow storm on Sunday morning. It’s almost April!

In other news, one of my favorite quotes over the weekend from Evie was actually this morning when we were reading a book and she said, “The epilogue is hiding!” Clever girl.

Willis Tower

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Do you recognize that building? The tall, iconic one majestically rising above the skyline? The tallest building in the U.S.? Oh, you must mean the Willis Tower of course!

A couple of days ago it was announced that the Sears Tower would be renamed the Willis Tower. I just hate that. I mean, I understand that the Sears corporation hasn’t occupied it since ’92, but when you have something that is so iconic, you can’t just go around changing names. Ugh! And believe me, it’s not going to bring you more customers, if anything, it will drive people away. We’re talking about the city that is still upset over the name change from Marshall Field’s to Macy’s almost 3 years ago.

The strangest part was that, reading the article it sounded like Willis didn’t pay to have the name changed and will not take up a significant portion of the building (only 3.5%). There is some confusion over that part, so I may not completely understand, but that is even more heinous. I could understand if the company was giving them a few million to stay afloat in this economy or something. Money talks. But the way it sounds, it is completely arbitrary.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, at the very bottom of the article, they throw out that the building might be repainted silver. Silver! A new name *and* a new color? Preposterous!

Absolutely Heartbreaking

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I came across this story today and it is one of the saddest things I have heard in a while. Ryan Moats is an NFL running back, but that is irrelevant to the story. That first link really covers the story well, so I suggest you just go read it there. You can also watch the video from the dashboard  camera in the police car, but I think reading the text summary is enough.

To make a long story short, Ryan Moats received a call that his mother in law was in the hospital and only expected to live for a few minutes. The family jumped in the car and sped to the hospital. Just before pulling into the parking lot, Moats failed to come to a complete stop at a red light, though he did slow down and make sure there was no traffic (and it was at night, so most likely he would have seen). He even appears to have his 4-way flashers on. A police officer pulls out and turns on his lights, but at this point Moats was cloase enough that he just pulls over and parks in the hospital parking lot. The police officer ignores his pleas to see his dying mother in law (though his wife does run into the hospital) and proceeds to lecture him for almost 15 minutes. At some point, hospital security and a nurse both come to confirm that his story is true and his mother in law has only seconds to live, but the officer is unmoved. By the time the officer lets them go, his mother in law has died.

Through it all, Moats was a real trooper. He is frustrated (obviously) but he doesn’t cause trouble, just begs and pleads for the officer to let him go. He never mentions that he is a football player or anything like that. I’m not sure I could have kept as calm under similar circumstances.

Much is being made of the fact that the officer pulled a gun, but I don’t blame him for that. If you pull someone over and then a bunch of people come spilling out of the car, as an officer I think you have a right to be nervous. It has also been questioned whether this was racially motivated. I honestly don’t think so. I think it was a simple case of an officer with no common sense and a power trip, being a complete and utter idiot. But one thing is for sure, it is tragic and I can’t imagine what it feels like to be Ryan Moats right there.  All that frustration and grief and anger. And he handled it like the ultimate stand up guy.

I think the police are handling it appropriately and, in particular, I thought these were some good comments from the Chief of Police and his assisstant respectively:

“At the point the officer was told that they were responding to a dying family member, that should have been his concern: to allow those people to get access to that family member.”

“When people are in distress, we should come to the rescue. We shouldn’t further their distress.”

For you Catholics out there

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PlanetDan points out that today is the Feast of the Annunciation. For you non-religious types, that means today is 9 months from Christmas, also known as the “Feast of the Double Line“. So, to celebrate this special day, PlanetDan made a nice inspirational poster, suitable for framing: