No, I’m not going to do that. This is a snapshot of our electronic diary world. It’s paradoxical how educators believe through various studies that the American literary rate is falling, yet the number of personal blogs is rising. Admittedly, some of them are a tough read but many range from entertaining to scary to just plain naughty. They’re kind of fun.

BTW, I like scanning blogs for the baby pictures. Some are so damn cute.

It’s been raining like a son-of-a-gun out there since yesterday. If you see a guy in an ark floating by, stop pointing and laughing and get on board. Per the Weather Service as of 5:35 AM:

HEAVY RAINFALL WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON ACROSS EASTERN CALIFORNIA AND WESTERN NEVADA. RAINFALL TOTALS THUS FAR ARE 4 TO 7 INCHES IN THE SIERRA NEVADA WITH 1 TO 2 INCHES IN THE RENO AREA. TOTAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS BY SATURDAY AFTERNOON WILL BE 6 TO 10 INCHES IN THE SIERRA WITH 1.5 TO 3 INCHES IN RENO AND SPARKS. SNOW LEVELS REMAIN NEAR 8000 FEET…WITH SIGNIFICANT RUNOFF EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON. SNOW LEVELS WILL FALL TO NEAR 5000 FEET LATE SATURDAY WHEN RUNOFF IS EXPECTED TO DECREASE.

Crappy night. Gonna have to find a doctor today because I’ve got the usual (and annual) symptoms of the good ol’ nasal and ear infections. And I finished two weeks of antibiotics that probably didn’t do anything more than mask the symptoms. Happy New Year.

We’ll hear the highlights of 2005, but, oy!, did the year suck is so many ways. Fortunately, idiots kept us sane. Here’s some sports stories that may have not caught your attention.

Resolutions…in no particular order:
- Lose more weight
- Get a job that matters
- Get a handle on the credit card bills
- Be less whiny (see above)
- More bike riding!
- Behave…try to behave…pretend to behave…ah, whatever

I’ll be happy to get any one of those.

Been mulling over the death penalty thing some and have come to realize that my thoughts have evolved as I’ve got older.
- When I was teenager, it was “kill them all and let God sort them out.”
- In my twenties, exceptions to every rule (spouse abusers and “The Burning Bed”).
- In my thirties, the issue smacked up side the head when my sister was convicted.
- Now in my forties, I teach convicted murderers.

Don’t get me wrong: there are people walking the planet who should be talking to God face-to-face and explaining their sins, but on the whole, the current judicial system of trial and conviction is so riddled with political and personal agendas, it’s a given that people being executed by the government who could very well be innocent of their crimes. At the moment, I support a ten-year ban on capital executions until every death row inmate’s case is reviewed objectively and the weight of full forensic science has been brought to bear (DNA testing of evidence). Maybe by the time the ban is over, we’ll understand that murder in all forms is holding us back as a society and a species.

Returning to the literary theme for a moment, according to the Mirriam-Webster, these 2005 ten most looked-up words on their website are:
1. integrity
2. refugee
3. contempt
4. filibuster
5. insipid
6. tsunami
7. pandemic
8. conclave
9. levee
10. inept

Just for fun…

“The inept Republican congressional conclave, attempting to steer contemptuous public scrutiny from their insipid attempts to provide support to the refugees of the New Orleans levee breaks and the Indonesian tsunami disaster, tried to pass a billion-dollar funding effort to block the bird flu pandemic, but the Democrats, on an integrity bender, blocked the bill with a filibuster.”

It’s a little wordy. I bet Aunt Lilly could cut it down.

And this is for her. Guess who this is from his days as a Kansas City Royals prospect?

Feel blah.

Woke up achy and sniffly and wondering if I’m getting a cold. Got the green tea drink and germ killing spray close at hand.

Came back to work early because I wasn’t accomplishing anything at home and I don’t want to burn leave time that may be needed down the road. Who knows who’s going to need surgery next? (not a joke).

Cartoon City is a strange little town, probably like most towns. It tries to be sophisticated yet not lose it’s “Old West” charm (if it had any to begin with). The fact of the matter is it’s a redneck town and probably always will be one.

Jeff Foxworthy defines “redneck” as someone with a “glorious lack of sophistication.” In Carson City, you will find parking lots of full of Escalades, Mercedes Benzes, and other high-end vehicles…out in front of the local Wal-Mart. On any given day, you will see a Labrador Retriever in the back of a pick-up truck speeding down the main street and the poor dog has a veterinarian’s cone collar around its neck (think about the wind factor in the collar). In this town you will find a beautiful blue Porsche with a Nevada license plate duct-taped to the fender.

Why anyone voluntarily lives here is beyond me (and I’ve lived here nearly twenty years).

Stationary bike at the gym:
Distance: 5.9 miles
Time: 25:00 minutes
379 calories burned

Just got out of King Kong, a movie about a behemoth who takes over an entire city and wins a pretty girl’s heart despite his monstrous features and animal-like feeding frenzies.

But enough about Peter Jackson. (ba-da-bump)

The story is deeply embedded in our culture and probably predates Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Beauty tames and destroys The Beast, so this is probably not needed.

Spoilers Below……

Here’s what I thought of the 2005 King Kong:

- Movies about giant apes are made for the big screen. This is worth the money and hassle of going to the theater.

- IMDb says the movie is 187 minutes long, but it seems much longer. Since we all know what’s going to happen, they could have easily cut some plot exposition and tightened up scenes and dialogue. By the time they got to the stinking island, I felt I was on that boat for years, probably the intent of the moviemakers.

- Naomi Watts is believable as the chimp’s girlfriend, but not a stage entertainer (again, probably the intent).

- And there was a lot more chemistry between Kong and Watts than Watts and Adrian Brody, but I blame the director for that. There was a small sense of hotness between the humans that never got explored.

- Has Brody’s nose always been that crooked? The big screen makes it appear like it’s more on the left side of his face than the right.

- No one today could have played the demented, neurotic movie director/producer Carl Denham better than Jack Black. I got the sense he was channeling Peter Jackson.

- The CGI was good, notably some of the Brontosaurus stampede. Other moments were pretty weak, especially Kong in the water and inserting the actors into the stampede (”What am I running from?”). By the time he climbed the Empire State Building, I’d forgotten Kong was a CGI model on top of actor Andy Serkis (Gollum of LoTR fame).

- The Empire State Building scene is a heart breaker.

- If you’re afraid of heights like me, this movie will drive you nuts.

- Evan Parke plays the first mate. When Black and Brody are developing the script onscreen, they talk about the death of the first mate in their movie-within-the-movie. I started counting the minutes until Parke’s character died.

- There is no ship that could take the battering of the Venture and stay afloat, but it’s a movie, so blah blah blah.

- Haven’t watched Jurassic Park in a while, but it doesn’t look like the CGI technology has evolved in the twelve years since, notably when displaying Mr. T. Rex (even three of them in a fight scene). Goes to prove JP was far ahead of its time.

- How did the movie makers get away with the horrible stereotypes during the Times Square stage scene at the end? Yes, the movie was set in the early 1930s, and it was all meant as a homage to the original 1933 film, but still…

- Kyle Chandler brought nothing to his role which is okay. He was playing a two-dimensionable actor with questionable screen skills and Chandler couldn’t show his acting chops off much, anyway. Hopefully this role will lead to others where folks can see his range.

- Bugs. I hate bugs. And this movie has BIG, ugly, scary, ravenous bugs. There were people in the audience moaning and crying out loud. And the rumor is gigantic spiders were cut from the final version because they were too gross. They could have left them in. Nobody would have noticed any difference.

And not having to do with the movie:

Lady, if your kid is coughing up a lung, don’t take him to a movie through the pouring rain. Everyone there could hear his clogged lungs. Get him to a doctor. The poor thing was suffering. And besides, he was too young to be in that movie theater.