Spring

I'm a Desert Rat. I love it when we go out to Vegas because there's a natural beauty to the desert that I just love. It's possible that it's just nostaglia but I love the drive from St. George to Las Vegas. The Gorge is cool and when you pop out of it the grey-brown mountains, vistas and the wide-openness speaks to me at my core.

Nothing beats the natural beauty of Valley of Fire or Redrock after rain.

That being said, I love having all four seasons here in St. Louis. All of the colors are at their most intense. Green isn't just green... it's a vibrant neon lime green. The purples and pinks are straight out of a Dr. Suess book. And dafodils and tupils display their wonderful colors with a vanity that only belongs to spring flowers.

People here seem to despise the rain at times. "Oh no! We're going to have storms!" is what new forecasters seem to say. I love it when the rain gets so intense that we can barely see our neighbor's roof. And storm clouds seem to come from The Nothing, rolling and pitch black, even in the middle of the day.

However, of course, I do prefer the sunny days, especially now that I can go on walks with Noah. This past Tuesday we went on two walks, one to the Cupcakery and another the Grand Basin in Forest Park to meet up with Em after she got off work.

Pretty soon the fireflys will be coming out and with them the wet heat of summer. But for now I'm just happy that color is back after what seemed like a rather long winter.

Brave New World?

It may be just me, but I think Sci-Fi writers must be awfully disappointed about where we are as a society. This popped into my head after watching "Jeopardy 1999" from a SNL skit from 1979. To be honest, it wasn't that funny (that's why I didn't post it), and the only things it predicted correctly was looser attitudes toward sex and Chevy Chase's non-existant post-SNL career. (Yeah, I'm not a fan of his).

Here's a list of disappointments:
1. Flying cars that run on garbage
2. Moonbases
3. Death Comets
4. Interstellar travel (not even at sub-light levels!)
5. Hot aliens
6. People used as food
7. Anything on Mars
8. Using the Sun to travel through time (And we still have whales! Take that Green Peace!)
9. Cyborgs
10. Ice Pirates

As you can see, we might as well not have running water. Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry lived in vain from what I can tell. (L. Ron Hubbard, on the other hand, never died... he's off fighting aliens).

So, to help us get over the fact that we're hopelessly behind... here's some Sci-Fi for ya

And for something a little more upbeat...

Well...maybe we're not so bad off after all.

So, I've been thinking quite a bit about what I'd want to write about in here, and I've decided to give politics a bit of a rest. For someone who hates politics, I sure do obsess about it. How about we start off with The Office then?

Now that TV writers are getting paid, Thursdays are back to being the nights that I wish I could fully pay attention to the TV while healing my guild through the first parts of Karazhan. And thanks to NBC's full embrace of the internet, I can catch up on it all. This weeks Office didn't take place at Dunder-Mifflin at all, but was probably the most uncomfortable it's ever been.

I've also started watching The Tick. There's a only a few episodes, and he hasn't yelled, "Spoon!" in any of the episodes, but it is rather fun to watch the precursor to Heroes, only with better costumes.

Now, about my rather diverse musical tastes. I think I can boil down my current musical tastes to a handful of people. First of all, Emily has introduced bluegrass to my life. The only bluegrass I have in my player is from Old Crow Medicine Show, which Dave introduced me to, but I don't think I would have liked it as much without Em's influence. She plays the banjo, and if I was to kick my own butt, I would pick up my dobro and get my groove on. So now I fully appreciate Allison Kraus. My bro Dave is responsible for leaking new music into my life. My Chemical Romance is all thanks to him (even though they aren't entirly new). He is hip and with it, the type of person every new father needs. Anything Hippie related is my Dad's fault. His life has been greatly influenced by Jim Morrison. My Mom is the classical music influence. I think this goes back to when she taught dance on Saturday mornings at UNLV.

Metallica is still my favorite band deep down, but I only listen to them when I am alone, and then I turn it up REAL loud.

Big Cop-out

I know it's a cop-out to post a video...but Christopher Walken is pure comic gold